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Good Stories 
About Roosevelt 



The Humorous Side 
of a Great American 



Bv CARLETON B. CASE 



SHREWESBURY PUBLISHING CO. 
CHICAGO 



T 



COPTHIGHT, 1920 
BY 

SHREWESBURY PUBLISHING CO. 



©CIA570345 



JUN 14 1920 



Good Stories 
About Roosevelt 



HIS LOVE OF FUN 

There is nothing in human beings at once so 
sane and so sympathetic as a sense of humor. 
This great gift the good fairies conferred upon 
Theodore Roosevelt at his birth in unstinted 
measure. No man ever had a more abundant 
sense of humor — joyous, irrepressible humor — 
and it never deserted him. Even at the most 
serious and even perilous moments if there was 
a gleam of humor anywhere he saw it and re- 
joiced and helped himself with it over the rough 
places. He loved fun, loved to joke and chaff, 

* and, what is more uncommon, greatly enjoyed 
being chaffed himself. His ready smile and con- 
tagious laugh made countless friends and saved 
him from many an enmity. 

The life of Theodore Roosevelt was a succes- 
sion of dynamic events, and he put action into 
everything with which he came into contact. As 
President he fought red tape continually, was 
always impatient with the slow functioning of 

^ Congress, and spoke his mind freely. There 
were besides so many novel events in his career 

3 



4 GOOD STORIES 

that good stories about him are told in abun- 
dance. Many of these anecdotes are reproduced 
in this book, inchiding a large number that illus- 
trate his amazing energy and versatility. 



OVERCOMING HANDICAPS 

As a boy the young Theodore was puny and 
sickly; but with that indomitable determination 
which characterized him in every act of his life, 
he entered upon the task of transforming his 
feeble body not merely into a strong one, but 
into one of the strongest. How well he succeeded 
every American knows. This physical feeble- 
ness bred in him nervousness and self-distrust, 
and in the same indomitable way he set himself 
to change his character as he changed his body, 
and to make himself a man of self-confidence 
and courage. He has told the story himself in 
his autobiography: 

**When a boy I read a passage in one of Cap- 
tain Marryat's books which always impressed me. 
In the passage the captain of some small British 
man-of-war is explaining to the hero how to ac- 
quire the quality of fearlessness. He says that 
at the outset almost every man is frightened 
when he goes into action, but that the course 
to follow is for the man to keep such a grip 
on himself that he can act just as if he was not 
frightened. After this is kept up long enough 
it changes from pretense to reality, and the man 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 5 

does in very fact become fearless by sheer dint 
of practicing fearlessness when he does not feel 
it. (I am using my own language, not Marryat's.) 
This was the theory upon which I went. There 
were all kinds of things which I was afraid of 
first, ranging from grizzly bears to *mean' horses 
and gun-fighters; but by acting as if I was not 
afraid I gradually ceased to be afraid. Most 
men can have the same experience if they choose. 
They will first learn to bear themselves well in 
trials, which they anticipate and school them- 
selves in advance to meet. After av/hile the 
habit will grow on them, and they will behave 
well in sudden and unexpected emergencies which 
come upon them unawares." 



HE GOES TO BILL SEWALL 

Just before entering Harvard, Roosevelt, on the 
advice of two of his cousins, took a step which 
had a lasting influence on his life. They sent 
him down in Maine to their old guide, Bill Sewall 
of Island Falls. With this born woodsman he 
learned to know and love the wilderness. There 
he developed tastes which later led him out into 
the wild West, to be a ranchman, a hunter, and 
finally the organizer of the Rough Riders, things 
which have done so much to shape his fortunes. 
Besides, he made a lifelong friend of Bill Sewall, 
as true a one as he could count among all his 
friendships. 



6 GOOD STORIES 

Island Falls was then beyond the railway and 
on the very edge of the immense wild lands of 
the Pine Tree State. In that village the pale, 
stoop-shouldered young gentleman from New 
York made himself at home, and one of the vil- 
lagers has declared: "Every one in the Falls 
liked him, for he was as plain as a spruce board 
and as square as a brick." He lived like a son 
in the simple home of the backwoodsman and 
tramped and camped with Bill as a chum. 

The experience was an object lesson in democ- 
racy, which was not lost on his youthful imag- 
ination. It helped him to learn that no little 
caste of well-to-do city people and college grad- 
uates, no Four Hundred, could boast all the wis- 
dom and virtue of the race. He found that there 
was much that a Knickerbocker could gain by 
association with an aristocrat of the forest. It 
recalls to mind the old, old story of the learned 
man in the boat of the fisherman: — 

"Don't you know the rules of syntax?" the 
pedant asked. 

"No," the fisherman answered. 

"Then one-fourth of your life is lost. Do you 
know algebra?" 

"No." 

"Then one-half of your life is lost. Do you 
know geometry?" But before the fisherman 
could confess his ignorance of this latter branch 
of learning, a huge wave upset the boat and cast 
both him and the professor into the water. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 7 

"Do you know how to swim?" he shouted to 
the professor. 

"No," the poor man cried. 

**Then the whole of your life is lost." 

Roosevelt was learning to value men according 
to what they knew, rather than by what they 
did not know. 

In his days with the Sewalls he did not go for 
big game and "he never could keep still long 
enough to fish." He shot his first deer while in 
the Adirondacks, and in Maine he was content to 
roam the primeval forest, sleep with Bill in his 
hunting hut and bag enough birds for their 
meals. His guide had been appealed to by Theo- 
dore's cousins to watch that he did not try to do 
more than his strength warranted. But "he 
wouldn't let any one else lug his gun," Bill said, 
"or help him out in any way. He never shirked 
his share of anything, no matter how played out 
he might be. The boy was grit clear through." 

Again and again he would return to his good 
friends in the woods for a vacation from college 
studies. Once at least he went only in time to 
save himself from a physical breakdown. Al- 
ways he found abundant healing in the midst of 
nature and each time he brought himself nearer 
to his constant goal, a vigorous body. 

NO COLLEGE HONORS 

When he graduated from Harvard he stood 
twenty-second in his class, which, by the way. 



8 GOOD STORIES 

was about the same as Grant's rank at West 
Point. He won few academic honors. No Com- 
mencement part fell to him and the only mention 
he received was in natural history. 



SPORT AT HARVARD 

His boxing is best remembered at Harvard of 
all his sporting activities. His delicate appear- 
ance amazed those who saw him make his first 
ventures with the gloves in the gymnasium. He 
weighed only one hundred and thirty and was a 
very doubtful-looking entry in the light-weight 
class. Besides, he had to go into combat with 
a pair of big spectacles lashed to his head, a bad 
handicap, which put his eyesight in peril every 
time he boxed. To offset this disadvantage, he 
aimed to lead swiftly and heavily and thus put 
his opponent on the defensive from the start. 

Not a few old Harvard men recall a character- 
istic instance of Roosevelt's sportsmanlike bear- 
ing. He was in the midst of a hot encounter 
when time was called. He promptly dropped 
his hands to his side, whereupon his antagonist 
dealt him a heavy blow squarely on his nose. 
There was an instant cry of "Foul, foul," from 
the sympathetic onlookers and a scene of noisy 
excitement followed. Above the uproar, Roose- 
velt, his face covered with blood, was heard 
shouting at the top of his voice, as he ran toward 
the referee, "Stop! stop! he didn't hear! he 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 9 

didn't hear!" Then he shook the hand of the 
other youth warmly, and the emotion of the little 
crowd changed from scorn of his opponent to 
admiration of him. 

He may never have come in first, as he has 
said, but he was always so ready, even to meet 
the class champion himself, and took the knocks 
in such good part that he never was second in 
the regard of all who delighted in pluck. More- 
over, he did not go in to win so much as to get 
out of the game all the fun and exercise he 
could. Sport for sport's sake was his standard. 
He did not adopt base ball, foot-ball, or any form 
of team work or spectacular display. He was 
spared, therefore, the fate of too many athletes, 
who let their play become the serious business 
of their college days, and whose false point of 
view works them a lifelong injury by stunting 
their minds and warping their characters. 



TOO MUCH FOR THE CHURCHMEN 

Nothing better shows the even balance which 
Roosevelt kept than that while he was active 
in the gymnasium, he was also active in the Sun- 
day school. He had joined the old church of his 
fathers, the Dutch Reformed, in New York, be- 
fore going to Harvard. There being no church 
of his denomination in Cambridge, however, he 
took a class in an Episcopal Sunday school. 

He had learned the spirit of service from his 



10 GOOD STORIES 

father. He must not live unto himself alone; he 
must feel he was doing something for others. He 
got along famously with his boys. When one of 
them came into the class with a black eye, the 
teacher questioned him earnestly about it. The 
boy explained, with manifest truthfulness, that 
his sister had been pinched by a boy who sat 
beside her. He had told the offender to stop and 
he would not stop, whereupon the gallant brother 
had fought for her. 

"You did perfectly right," said Roosevelt, the 
muscular Christian, and he gave him a dollar as 
a poultice for the black eye. The class hailed 
this as a fine example of justice, and drew nearer 
than before to their teacher, for there is no way 
to get a firmer grip on a boy's heart than by 
taking his part in battle. Some of the grave 
elders of the parish, however, hearing of the 
matter, were much displeased. In the end, Roose- 
velt left this field of labor and found a class in a 
Congregational Sunday school. 



IN HIS NIGHTGOWN 

Another remembered incident of his Cambridge 
life shows how well he had gained that readiness 
to act in any situation, which was one of his 
marked traits at all times. A horse in a stable 
adjoining his lodgings aroused the neighborhood 
in the dead of night by a noise that indicated it 
was in sore trouble. Half a dozen men got up 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 11 

and dressed and went to the rescue, only to find, 
when they reached the stable, that Roosevelt 
was already on the scene and doing the needed 
thing to relieve the poor beast. For he had not 
stopped to dress nor even to take time to walk 
downstairs. He had gone to the rescue out of a 
second-story back window, and climbed down a 
piazza post in his night clothes. 



STRANGE PETS AT HOME 

President Roosevelt taught his boys to shoot 
and box, to swim and row and ride. He tried to 
teach them not to be afraid of anything. Their 
country place at Oyster Bay swarmed with all 
kinds of strange pets. A little girl out in Kansas 
threw a live badger on the platform of the Presi- 
dent's car, and he brought the queer thing home 
for his children. They had a lot of fun with him 
in spite of his habit of biting their bare legs. 
First and last they had such playfellows as a 
lion, a hyena, a wild-cat, a coyote, two big par- 
rots, five bears, an eagle, a barn owl, several 
snakes and lizards, a zebra which the Emperor 
of Abyssinia sent them, kangaroo-rats and flying 
squirrels, rabbits, and guinea-pigs. 

Many of these animals and reptiles were thrust 
upon the family as gifts, and after a time were 
added to the public zoological collection in New 
York. The kangaroo-rats and flying squirrels 
slept in the pockets and blouses of the children, 



12 GOOD STORIES 

whence they sometimes made unexpected appear- 
ances at the breakfast and dinner table or in 
school. 



DOGS, AND MORE DOGS 

There were dogs without number, for dogs 
liked the President. They would bound out to 
welcome him, and he would call each by name 
and give him a fond pat. Once when he was in 
a theatre box in Washington a dog strayed out 
on the stage, and, stretching himself, yawned 
loud and long. There was a roar of laughter 
from the audience, in which Mr. Roosevelt's voice 
was by no means lost. At any rate, the dog 
heard it, and turned to look at him. In another 
second he leaped from the stage into the box and 
settled himself in the President's lap. By this 
time the play and players were forgotten by the 
people as they watched the Presidential box, and 
the performance could not go on until the Presi- 
dent had leaned over and set his four-footed 
friend upon the stage. 

Mr. Roosevelt had a like experience with a dog 
while on a bear hunt in Colorado. A little black 
and tan in the hunting pack picked him as his 
favorite. Skip would run forty miles a day on 
the chase, but liked best a front seat on the 
President's horse. At night he would sleep on 
the foot of his bed, and growl defiance at anybody 
and anything that came near. "I grew attached 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 13 

to the friendly, bright little fellow," the Presi- 
dent confessed, ''and at the end of the hunt I 
took him home as a playmate for the children." 



FATHER O'GRADY HAS BABIES 

Some of Skip's new companions at Oyster Bay 
bore names far more imposing than his. There 
was a black bear, with an uncertain temper, 
whom the children had named Jonathan Edwards 
in honor of the famous divine, who was an an- 
cestor of their mother. There were guinea-pigs 
who bore names in compliment to Bishop Doane 
of Albany, Father O'Grady, a neighboring priest. 
Dr. Johnson, Fighting Bob Evans, and Admiral 
Dewey. A distinguished man, who was calling 
on the President, did not understand this custom, 
and therefore was bewildered to hear one of the 
children rush in and breathlessly report, "Oh, oh, 
Father O'Grady has had some children!" 



ABOUT THAT PONY 

Perhaps the most honored representative of the 
animal kingdom at Oyster Bay was Algonquin, 
a little calico pony from far-away Iceland, which 
Secretary Hitchcock gave to Archie. Skip, as 
well as Archie, delighted to ride Algonquin. 
Nothing was too good for this Icelander, and 
when a naval officer came to call in full-dress uni- 



14 GOOD STORIES 

form, Archie was so impressed that he at once 
ran to get Algonquin that he too might enjoy the 
spectacle. The pageant was lost on him, how- 
ever, and he would look at nothing except the 
nice green grass in the lawn, which he nibbled 
greedily. 

But once when Archie was sick in the White 
House, Algonquin made up for all past neglect. 
The stable boys were sure that if the invalid 
could have a visit from the pony it would do him 
more good than medicine. They conspired to- 
gether, secretly smuggled him into the basement 
and into the elevator, and thus carried him up to 
the sick-room, to the unbounded joy of the 
patient. 



ALL-NIGHT PICNICS 

A red-letter day in the boy life at Oyster Bay 
was when the President went picnicking. The 
Roosevelt boys and their cousins, who lived near 
by, would plan it all, and with the President row 
off to some quiet cove, away from telephones and 
Secret Service men. There they would catch 
their fish and build a fire. The President would 
turn cook before an admiring circle of youths, 
who watched him with watering mouths while 
he fried the fish or strips of beefsteak and thin 
slices of potatoes. "You ought to taste my fa- 
ther's steak," Archie boasted all the rest of the 
year. "He tumbles it all in together, potatoes, 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 15 

onions, and steak. I tell you it's fine." After 
supper the President told them stories of big 
game out West, of mountain lions and grizzly 
bears, while the little fellows watched the sha- 
dows around them. One night they heard a fox 
barking in the woods, which thrilled them 
through and through, and they discussed the 
chance of seeing him in the morning. And sure 
enough they saw him running along the shore 
while they and the President were in for their 
early swim. 



KEPT HIS PROMISE 

The eternal boy in the President could always 
hear the call of his boys. On a certain occasion 
several of the boys came into the library while 
he was talking with a man, and one of the cous- 
ins spoke up: **Uncle, it's after four." "So it 
is," the President replied, as he looked at the 
clock. "Why didn't you call me sooner? One 
of you get my rifle. I must ask you to excuse 
me," he said, as he turned to his caller. "We'll 
finish this talk later. I promised the boys I 
would go shooting with them at four o'clock, and 
I never keep them waiting. It's hard for a boy 
to wait." 

In order to give his boys a chance for rifle 
practice he provided a two-hundred-yard range 
at Oyster Bay. 



16 GOOD STORIES 

WHY BOYS LOVED "TEDDY" 

When Mr. Roosevelt was President, his great 
friend, Jacob A. Riis, who had accompanied him 
in earlier days on many a midnight expedition 
through the slums of New York City, seeking to 
do good, said of him: 

*'Boys admire President Roosevelt because he 
himself *is a good deal of a boy/ Some men 
have claimed that Mr. Roosevelt never has ma- 
tured; but this is saying no more than that he 
has not stopped growing, that he is not yet 
imprisoned in the crust of age. To him the 
world is still young and unfinished. He has a 
boy's fresh faith that the things that ought to 
be done can be done. His eyes are on the future 
rather than on the past. 

"Young America never drew so near to any 
other public man as to Theodore Roosevelt. All 
boys in the land feel that there is a kindred 
spirit in the White House. Every one of them 
knows Teddy* and the Teddy bear' and the 
Teddy hat.' But it is doubtful if the President 
ever was called Teddy' when he was a boy. He 
used to be Teedy' in the family circle and at 
Harvard he was Ted,' while among the intimates 
of his manhood he is always called Theodore.' 
He is Teddy,' however, to millions of boys who 
delight in their comradeship with the President 
which this nickname implies. It does not mean 
that they are lacking in respect for him; it sim- 
ply means that they are not afraid of him, and 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 17 

that they feel they know him and he knows 
them." 



THE COLONEL AMONG CHILDREN 

The Colonel had a way with youngsters. All 
too little to know how to admire him loved him 
on sight. The older ones did both. The stories 
about him with children here and there are in- 
numerable. His animosity toward race suicide 
was no cold, abstract, sociological tenet. There 
was the little invalid in Portland, Oregon, car- 
ried to the curb on a stretcher to see him go 
by, when he was passing through in 1903. He 
noticed her, stopped the carriage, jumped out and 
kissed her. 

One day in February, 1911, when walking back 
to the office of The Outlook in New York after 
luncheon, the Colonel found a lost nine-year-old, 
newly arrived with his parents via Ellis Island, 
crying in the streets, and dried the child's eyes 
and took him to the East Twenty-third street 
police station, where he turned him over to the 
matron, and then swapped old memories with the 
bluecoats behind the desk, one or two of whom 
had been on the force when he was Commis- 
sioner. 

There are countless stories of his own, the 
Roosevelt children, in and out of the White 
House and at Sagamore Hill, and latterly there 
v/ere the photographs of him holding the grand- 



18 GOOD STORIES 

babies. Of these stories, a favorite in its day 
was about his little boating and sleeping-out-in- 
blankets expedition to a remote sand beach on 
the Sound, his companions being Kermit, Archie 
and their cousin Philip. The date was August 
9, 1902. 

The President and the three kids quietly stole 
off to the bay, eluding all eyes but Secretary 
Loeb's, and that was the evening when the Pa- 
cific cables rumpus broke like a bombshell, and 
telegrams and emissaries and magnates and re- 
porters poured in vainly upon the Roosevelt 
home. Mr. Loeb could not say where the Presi- 
dent was and seemed embarrassed by it. The 
four simple-lifers returned in the morning after 
a bully time, and the business of a President on 
vacation was resumed. Subsequently such sleep- 
ing-out excursions were a feature of every sum- 
mer. 

Then there was the autumn day in 1917 when 
the Colonel sat for two hours at the elbow of 
Justice Hoyt in Children's Court, New York, 
heard the cases, and acted as unofficial consult- 
ing Justice. Once, leaning over, he whispered to 
a youngster, "It's all right this time, sonny. 
You're all right. But remember, don't do it 
again, or he'll send you away! He'll send you 
away!" And again, after hearing how some 
other juvenile malefactor of little wealth had 
made full restitution to the pushcart man or 
somebody, the Roosevelt fist thumped the arm of 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 19 

the chair, with "That's a fine boy! That kind 
make first-rate citizens!" 

Soon after the Roosevelts took up their resi- 
dence at the White House a fawning society 
woman asked one of the younger boys if he did 
not dislike the *'common boys" he met at the pub- 
lic schools. The boy looked at her in wonder- 
ment for a moment and then replied : 

"My papa says there are only tall boys and 
short boys and good boys and bad boys, and 
that's all the kind of boys there are." 

When the leader of the Rough Riders returned 
from the Spanish-American war he found all his 
children congregated near a pole from which 
floated a large flag of their own manufacture, 
inscribed : 

"To Colonel Roosevelt." 

He said that the tribute touched him more 
deeply than any of the pretentious demonstra- 
tions accorded him. 

Several years ago Judge Ben Lindsey of Den- 
ver asked Colonel Roosevelt to send his son Quen- 
tin out West. A few months before his death 
the Colonel was talking to the Judge, and tears 
came into his eyes as he said: "Judge, you re- 
member what you said about that boy? Well, 
he went west, he went west" (in France) . Then 
he added: 

"It is pretty hard. His mother, of course, like 
all mothers, feels it, but by George — by George, 
it's all right; and I tell you. Judge, if this war 
lasts another year I won't have a son left. Not 



20 GOOD STORIES 

one! I tell you, they are bears; they are bears 
for a fight when there ought to be a fight. I am 
proud of them." 



ROOSEVELT'S KIND OF BOY 

Mr. Roosevelt was fond of telling the boys 
what their country expects of them. He was a 
great friend and supporter of the Boy Scouts of 
America, who wore official mourning crepe on 
their arms for him after his death, and mourned 
him most sincerely. Here is what he once said 
about the American boy — and every boy should 
paste it in his hat: 

"What we have a right to expect of the Ameri- 
can boy is that he shall turn out to be a good 
American man. Now the chances are that he 
won't be much of a man unless he is a good deal 
of a boy. He must not be a coward or a weak- 
ling, a bully, a shirk, or a prig. He must work 
hard and play hard. He must be clean-minded 
and^clean-lived, and able to hold his own under 
all circumstances and against all comers. It is 
only on these conditions that he will grow into 
the kind of man of whom America can really be 
proud. In life, as in a football game, the prin- 
ciple to follow is to hit the line hard; don't foul 
and don't shirk, but hit the line hard." 

—THEODORE ROOSEVELT. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 21 

IDEAL FAMILY LIFE 

The warmth of the affection shown within the 
Roosevelt household was a notable part of the life 
at the homestead, Sagamore Hill, near Oyster 
Bay, N. Y. 

When a Western visitor was at the hospital in 
New York just before Christmas, 1918, Captain 
Archie Roosevelt, who was wounded in France 
and invalided home, came in to bid the Colonel 
good-by — a slight, boyish figure, with the arm 
paralyzed by shrapnel still supported by its metal 
brace. They talked a few minutes about a trip 
they planned to harpoon tarpon in Southern wa- 
ters in March, the Colonel explaining with enthus- 
iasm that harpooning was particularly adapted 
to such cripples because it could be done with 
one arm. And then the Captain crossed the room 
and kissed his father good-by. 

It was the same with all the members of the 
family. When his children saw their father after 
a separation they would pat him on the shoulder 
as they passed him in the room, and he would 
detain them a moment to hold their hands. 

'T must talk that over with Edith (Mrs. Roose- 
velt) and Alice" (his daughter) , was his frequent 
reply when some personal matter was up for his 
consideration. "They have such good judgment." 



22 GOOD STORIES 

FAMILY ALL OUTDOOR FOLK 

The whole family was devoted to outdoor life. 
During the Coloners terms as President, the 
White House stables contained excellent riding 
horses. There was a horse or pony for every 
member of the family. There were two mounts 
for the President, one being Rusty, a bay heavy- 
weight hunter on which the President frequently 
jumped fences in the country to remind him of 
the time when he once rode to hounds on Long 
Island. 

Because of the President's example there was 
probably more good healthful exercise taken in 
Washington during his administration than has 
been known there before or since. Americans 
are not generally credited with being anemic, but 
the official and social duties of the capital never 
before were so crowded in between sets of tennis, 
riding and walking expeditions. 

His contests President Roosevelt held not only 
with his boys and other members of his family, 
but with Cabinet officers and foreign diplomats. 
Capitals of Europe were sometimes highly enter- 
tained by accounts of their representatives fol- 
lowing the President, who had invited them for 
afternoon walks, across fences, ditches, and thru 
mud ankle deep. Pouring rain never prevented 
the President from taking his walks with mem- 
bers of the foreign embassies, and he was always 
deUghted with credit given him for inaugurating 
the strenuous life in Washington. And the out- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 23 

door life lived in Washington was but a repeti- 
tion of that enjoyed at Sagamore Hill, typical 
haven of domestic bliss and always a scene of 
rational pleasures. Whether the Colonel was in 
or out of office, his delightful country home was 
always his favorite abode. 



DO IT NOW 

Jacob Riis tells of his going to Sagamore Hill, 
during the Colonel's Presidency, to complain that 
a rule had been adopted by the War Department, 
discontinuing the custom of having the names of 
private soldiers who were killed in the Philip- 
pines cabled home. The reports merely dismissed 
the matter by saying that so many unnamed 
privates had fallen. Mr. Riis' chance to speak of 
the matter did not come until he had luncTieon. 
Adjutant-General Corbin was present, and the 
President at once turned to him and asked, **Gen- 
eral, is there such a rule?'* 

"Yes, Mr. President," he answered. 

"Why?" 

"The department adopted it, I believe, from 
motives of economy." 

"General, can you telegraph from here to the 
Philippines?" 

General Corbin thought that if the order were 
to be repealed, it could better be done from Wash- 
ington. But the President said: 

"No! No! We will not wait. The mothers 



24 GOOD STORIES 

who gave the best they had to the country should 
not be breaking their hearts, that the Govern- 
ment may save twenty-five or fifty dollars. Save 
the money somewhere else." 

Forthwith from the table at Sagamore Hill 
went the new ruling that the names of the pri- 
vates as well as those of the officers falling in 
the Philippines, should be sent home by cable. 



DEFIES PARTY LEADERS 

It was on April 6, 1882, that young Roosevelt 
took the floor in the Assembly at Albany and 
demanded that Judge Westbrook of Newburgh, 
against whom certain charges had been made, be 
impeached. And for sheer moral courage that 
act is probably supreme in Roosevelt's life. He 
must have expected failure. Even his youth and 
idealism and ignorance of public affairs could not 
blind him to the apparently inevitable conse- 
quences. 

That speech — the deciding act in Roosevelt's 
career — was not remarkable for eloquence. But 
it was remarkable for fearless candor. He called 
thieves thieves, regardless of their millions; he 
slashed savagely at the judge and the attorney- 
general; he told the plain unvarnished truth as 
his indignant eyes saw it. 

When he finished, the veteran leader of the 
Republicans rose and with gently contemptuous 
raillery asked that the resolution to take up the 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 25 

charge be voted down. He said he wished to give 
young Mr. Roosevelt time to think about the wis- 
dom of his course. 

**I/* said he, "have seen many reputations in 
the State broken down by loose charges made 
in the Legislature." 

And presently the Assembly gave "young Mr. 
Roosevelt time to think" by voting not to take 
up his "loose charges." 

Ridicule, laughter, a ripple — apparently it was 
all over, except the consequences to the bump- 
tious and dangerous young man which might flow 
from the cross set against his name in the black 
books of "the ring." 



HE FIGHTS CORRUPTION AND WINS 

That night the young man was once more 
urged to be "sensible," to "have regard for his 
future usefulness," to "cease injuring the party." 
He snapped his teeth together and defied the 
party leaders. The next day he again rose and 
again lifted his puny voice and his puny hand 
against smiling, contemptuous Corruption. 

Day after day he persevered on the floor of the 
Assembly, in interviews for the press; a few 
newspapers here and there joined with him; As- 
semblymen all over the State began to hear from 
their constituents. Within a week his name was 
known from Buffalo to Montauk Point, and every- 
where the people were applauding him. 



26 GOOD STORIES 

On the eighth day of his bold, smashing at- 
tack the resolution to take up the charges was 
again voted upon at his demand. And the As- 
semblymen, with the eyes of the whole people 
upon them, did not dare longer keep themselves 
on record as defenders of a judge who feared to 
demand an investigation. The opposition col- 
lapsed. Roosevelt won by 104 to 6. 



BEATS A HIRED THUG 

When the gentlemen who had been accustomed 
to run the lower house of the Legislature, no 
matter which party was in power, found that 
they could not control Mr. Roosevelt, that he 
could be neither bought nor bullied, they resorted 
to the desperate expedient of hiring a thug to 
administer physical chastisement as a rebuke for 
his temerity in opposing their will. The mere 
fact showed the caliber of the men who had been 
in almost absolute control of legislation in the 
State — and the need of men like Roosevelt in 
public hfe. 

One night, in the lobby of the old Delavan 
House in Albany, since burned, the thug and his 
expected victim met. There the legislators were 
accustomed to congregate every evening and 
much of the "inside" business of the session was 
transacted. Mr. Roosevelt started to leave the 
hotel at 10 o'clock on the night in question, after 
spending some time chatting with fellow-mem- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 27 

bers. As he passed a door leading to the buffet, 
a noisy group emerged, as if by signal. Among 
them was a pugilist known as "Stubby" Collins, 
and this fellow proceeded to jostle Mr. Roosevelt 
with some force. Instantly the latter, who was 
alone, realized the nature and animus of the act. 
He paused, on guard, and "Stubby" struck at 
him, demanding with a show of indignation what 
he meant by running into him that way. 

"Stubby's" blow did not land on the young 
legislator. His employers had not told him that 
Mr. Roosevelt had been one of the best boxers at 
Harvard, and enjoyed a fight. But he had been 
paid to "beat up" the young man and went ahead 
to earn his fee. 

With great coolness Mr. Roosevelt awaited the 
attack which he knew v/as coming. He took up 
a position where he could see, not only the thug, 
but all the group accompanying him and in the 
background certain others whom he suspected of 
being the real principals. As he stood waiting, 
"Stubby" made his rush. 

The fight lasted less than a minute, for the 
thug had more than met his match. He had the 
surprise of his life. As his friends picked him 
up from the floor, a badly beaten man, "Stubby" 
gazed in astonishment at the smiling Roosevelt 
and realized that he had much to learn about 
boxing and "beating up." 

As the thug was removed for repairs, Mr. 
Roosevelt walked across the lobby and pleasantly 
informed the astounded promoters of the affair 



28 GOOD STORIES 

that he understood their connection with it and 
was greatly obliged to them. He said he had not 
enjoyed anything so much for a year. 

Respect for his personality was thenceforth 
among the mingled feelings with which he was 
regarded by the inner circles of legislation at 
Albany, and his influence grew apace. 



ANECDOTES OF HIS RANCH LIFE 

A characteristic incident showing Roosevelt's 
readiness to throw down the moral gauntlet oc- 
curred at Medora, North Dakota, at a meeting 
of cattle men. The county had three prisoners 
who were the last of a gang of outlaws, and it 
was shown that a deputy sheriff, who was in his 
"unofficial moments" a cow thief, was in alliance 
with them. The ranchmen hesitated to denounce 
the sheriff when he strolled in to take part in the 
meeting of protest. He was a "two-gun" man 
with a nasty temper and "wore a brace of the 
most restless six shooters in the Kildeer region 
of the Bad Lands." 

Mr. Roosevelt was the one who explained to 
the sheriff in no uncertain terms the evil of cow 
stealing. The disappearance of the next cow, he 
said, might become the signal for declaring the 
corrupt officiars office vacant, and it was not 
without the pale of possibility that certain of 
Roosevelt's friends, whom he might be unable to 
restrain, might invoke the assistance of a rope or 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 29 

a Winchester in preventing their herds from de- 
predations. 

Contrary to expectations, the sheriff drew 
neither of the guns projecting from his belt; gave 
no resentful sign. His look at Roosevelt was one 
of startled understanding of an unpleasant deter- 
mination. But that was all — and the ranchmen 
of the Kildeer mountain region came to have a 
serene feeling as they turned into their blankets 
at night that their cows would not diminish in 
number before morning. 

From that time on Roosevelt's position in the 
West was one of distinction among men. His 
real business was raising cattle and caring for 
them on the plains, and if anything could have 
raised him in their estimation more than his de- 
termination to be a real "cattle man" as distinct 
from a "sheep man" it v/as the display of nerve, 
which he never lacked. 



CAPTURED BOAT THIEVES 

Once on returning from his ranch, says James 
Morgan in "Theodore Roosevelt, the Boy and the 
Man," he found that some horse thieves, in mak- 
ing their escape, had taken his boat. They felt 
sure that this would make them safe from pur- 
suit because there was no other boat. Bill Sew- 
all, however, built a rude craft in great haste, 
and on this he and Mr. Roosevelt and another 
man started down the Little Missouri. They 



30 GOOD STORIES 

floated probably for one hundred and fifty miles 
before they saw the camp of the fugitives. 

Mr. Roosevelt, unseen, stole ashore and upon 
the camp. When near enough he cried, with his 
weapon pointed, "Hands up, or I will shoot I" The 
only man about the place was asleep, so it 
chanced, and, thus rudely awakened, he was in 
great alarm. He rolled over and over on the 
ground in his anxiety not to be shot. He proved 
to be no more than a poor tool of the robbers 
and could hardly make himself understood in 
English. The thieves, two in number, made their 
appearance towards dark. They were in the 
stolen boat. Mr. Roosevelt and one of his men 
crept down by the river, where they sprang from 
their hiding as the outlav/s drew near, and covered 
them with their guns. There was nothing for 
the men in the boat to do but to throw up their 
hands and surrender. 

Nearly a week was required to take the cap- 
tives to the county seat, a distance of two hun- 
dred miles. The boats stuck in the ice-jams and 
were almost upset. Each night a fire was built 
on the river bank and the two culprits were com- 
pelled to lie on opposite sides of it, while Mr. 
Roosevelt sat on watri until midnight and the 
rest of the night was divided between his two 
assistants. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 31 

LIVED THE HARDIEST OF LIVES 

During his two years in the West as a ranch- 
man Mr. Roosevelt lived the life of the hardiest 
plainsman. On round-ups he endured all the 
hardships of his men. He spent much of his 
time hunting, and killed specimens of all the 
game to be found on the plains and in the moun- 
tains. He was particularly fond of bear hunting, 
which requires a nerve as steady and an aim as 
sure as the pursuit of any game in the United 
States. 

But Roosevelt was never a "dead shot." He 
always talked and wrote in a most dispassionate 
way about his "misses." He was called by guides 
a "mighty good game shot," his success being 
due to enacting faithfully his own description of 
the hunter which he wrote for his "Hunting 
Trips of a Ranchman" : 

"He [the hunter] must be persevering, watch- 
ful, hardy, and with good judgment; and a little 
dash and energy at the proper time often help 
immensely. I myself am not and never will be 
more than an ordinary shot ; for my eyes are bad 
and my hand not over steady; yet I have killed 
every kind of game to be found on the plains." 

HUNTED BIG GAME 

Even earlier than his ranching experiences — 
in 1883 — Mr. Roosevelt had attracted notice as 



32 GOOD STORIES 

a hunter of big game in the Rockies and else- 
where. Characteristically enough, small game 
had no attraction for him, and it is doubtful 
whether he ever shot a rabbit. Only when the 
beast had some chance against the hunter did 
sport appeal to him, and, naturally enough, the 
game that seemed most to his taste was the 
grizzly bear of the Rockies, that incarnation of 
strength, fury, and cunning. 

When Mr. Roosevelt arrived in the Rocky 
Mountain country and announced his intention 
of tracking the grizzly bear, the toughs of the 
region declared their intention of **doing him up.'' 
He was a tenderfoot. One of them went so far 
as to send a message to Roosevelt to the effect 
that if he proceeded to track the grizzlies there 
would be shooting. Upon receipt of the message 
Roosevelt inquired where this person with the 
propensity for shooting lived, and rode at once 
into his camp. The man, however, had forgotten 
why he wanted to shoot. 

That incident put an end to any inclination to 
treat Roosevelt as a tenderfoot, and before the 
hunting campaign was ended he had won the re- 
spect of all those rough men of the West, and 
when the time came many of those who had 
been ready to "do him up" as a tenderfoot v/ere 
the most eager to follow him into the jungles of 
Cuba. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 33 

KILLS HIS FIRST BUFFALO 

The first guide of Mr. Roosevelt in a buffalo 
hunt, Ferris by name, has told us about it. On 
a September day in 1883 the future President 
arrived at a lonely railroad station, with the buf- 
falo ranges fifty miles away over a badly broken 
country. The guide describes Roosevelt as a 
"thin young man, plainly dressed." 

"It meant hard work to get a buffalo at that 
time," says Ferris, "and whether the thin young 
man could stand the trip was a question, but 
Roosevelt was on horseback and he rode better 
than I did, and could stand just as much knock- 
ing about as I could. 

"In the first night out, when we were twenty- 
five or thirty miles from a settlement, we went 
into camp on the open prairie, with our saddle 
blankets over us, our horses picketed, and the 
picket ropes tied about the horns of our saddles, 
which we used for pillows. In the middle of the 
night there was a rush, our pillows were swept 
from under our heads and our horses went tear- 
ing off over the prairie, frightened by wolves. 

"Roosevelt was up and off in a minute after 
the horses. 

"On the fourth or fifth day out, I think it was, 
our horses pricked up their ears, and I told Roose- 
velt there was a buffalo close at hand. We dis- 
mounted and advanced to a big 'washout* near, 
peered over its edge, and there stood a huge 



84 GOOD STORIES 

buffalo bull, calmly feeding and unaware of our 
presence. 

" *Hit him where that patch of red shows on his 
side/ said I, *and you've got him/ 

"Roosevelt was cool as a cucumber, took a care- 
ful aim, and fired. Out came the buffalo from 
the washout, with blood pouring from his mouth 
and nose. 'You've got him,' I shouted, and so 
it proved, for the buffalo plunged a few steps and 
fell." 



AT HOME EVERYWHERE 

For days at a time, when he was a young 
ranchman, he would roam the wilds alone with 
his pony, and his pocket editions of the classics, 
and the simplest and scantiest provisions. He 
has slept on the prairie in his buffalo bag when 
the thermometer had fallen to sixty-five degrees 
below zero. One night when he was out, a bliz- 
zard overtook him, and obliged him to seek shel- 
ter. Coming upon a cowboy, who was also fleeing 
from the storm, the two found a deserted hut, in 
which they took refuge. As they sat about the 
fire they had built, Mr. Roosevelt read "Hamlet" 
to his companion, who was an uncultivated son 
of the plains, but who was deeply interested in 
the tale. At the end of the reading he gave it 
as his enthusiastic opinion that "old Shakespeare 
savveyed human nature some." Mr. Roosevelt 
learned to take life everywhere as he found it. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 35 

He could wash his clothes, and cook his meals, 
and in his Wild West days he went into frontier 
society. He attended the balls, and danced with 
the women, and opened one cowboy ball with the 
wife of a small stockman, dancing the lancers 
with her, opposite her husband, who not long 
before had killed a notorious bad man in self- 
defence. 



ALONE WITH A GRIZZLY 

From his boyhood wanderings in the groves 
of Long Island and in the woods of Maine to his 
last hunting expedition in the Rocky Mountains, 
Mr. Roosevelt's steady purpose was to build up 
his body and to train his mind, to gain the self- 
reliance of the primitive man. How well and 
how early he succeeded in this ambition was 
shown by an experience of many years ago. He 
was hunting with an old mountain guide in a 
strange and remote part of Idaho. The guide 
v/as so rheumatic and crabbed that he v/as a 
most trying companion. Finally, when he got to 
drinking to excess, the young man would put up 
with him no longer. 

Roosevelt took his horse, his sleeping-bag, a 
frying-pan, some salt, flour, and baking-powder, 
a chunk of salt pork, his washing-kit, a hatchet 
and his wardrobe, which consisted of a few pairs 
of socks and some handkerchiefs, and boldly 
struck out for himself. He had now only his 



36 GOOD STORIES 

compass for a guide through a region unknown 
to him. There was virtually no trail. When 
night came he would throw down his sleeping-bag 
on a mat of pine needles beside a crystal brook, 
drag up a few dry logs, and then go off with 
his rifle to get a bird for his supper. Once, while 
on this long and lonely journey homeward, he en- 
countered in the fading light of day a big grizzly 
bear. In the combat that followed, the savage 
beast charged straight at him, roaring furiously, 
as it crashed and bounded through the bushes, 
its mighty paw barely missing him. The in- 
trepid rifleman won the battle, and the next 
morning after his regular plunge in the icy wa- 
ters of a mountain torrent, he laboriously re- 
moved the beautiful coat of his fallen foe, there- 
after a cherished trophy at Oyster Bay. 



BREAKING PRECEDENTS 

While President Roosevelt knew how to pre- 
serve the dignity of his station, he refused to 
be bound by every social tradition which has 
grown up around the Presidency. He believed 
that the President of the United States need be 
no more and no less than a gentleman in order 
to receive all the respect that is due him. **It is 
my endeavor," he said to a caller early in his 
administration, **to make the White House during 
my term not a second-rate palace, like that of 
some insignificant prince, but the home of a self- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 37 

respecting American citizen who has been called 
for a time to serve his countrymen in executive 
office." 

Feeling that his own breeding was good 
enough, he refused to put on Presidential man- 
ners. For instance, there was an old rule under 
which he would take precedence of his wife. He 
rejected it at once, refusing to go through a door 
before any woman. Again, Washington was 
shocked one morning, not long after Mr. Roose- 
velt took office, to hear that the President had 
walked over to Senator Hannahs to breakfast. A 
President was supposed never to enter the door 
of any one outside the circle of his official family, 
the members of the Cabinet. Mr. Roosevelt, how- 
ever, would not be a prisoner in the White House. 
One day he even dropped in at the British Em- 
bassy and called on Lord Pauncefote. That was 
almost treasonable in the eyes of the tradition 
worshippers, for the Embassy was really foreign 
soil. Nevertheless they survived to see him sail 
away from the shores of the United States and 
pay a visit to the President of Panama. 



THE PRESIDENT AND THE PAINTERS 

A story is told of the President joining some 
house painters, who were at work at the White 
House. 

"How much do you get a day?" he asked one 
of them. 



38 GOOD STORIES 

"Three dollars and a quarter." 

"That's mighty good pay for such pleasant 
work." 

Taking a brush, he rapidly covered ten square 
feet and then said: — 

"I used to think I should like to be a painter. 
It always appealed to me because you can see 
something accomplished with each stroke of the 
brush." 



SQUARE DEAL FOR THE JEWS 

One lesson in the "square deal" was taught 
by Mr. Roosevelt, while President of the New 
York Police Commission, when a notorious for- 
eign agitator came to New York. This person, 
who was widely known as a "Jew baiter," or as 
one who went about stirring up hatred and 
strife against the Jewish race, was to open a 
campaign in the United States. His first speech 
was to be delivered in New York, and his friends 
came to Mr. Roosevelt with an appeal for police 
protection. "He shall have all the police protec- 
tion he wants," the Commissioner assured the 
delegation. 

Then he sent for a police inspector and said: 
"Select thirty good, trusty, intelligent Jewish 
members of the force, men whose faces most 
clearly show their race, and order them to report 
to me in a body." When the thirty chosen rep- 
resentatives of the chosen people stood before 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 39 

him a broad smile of satisfaction spread over his 
face, for he had never seen a more Hebraic as- 
semblage in his life. 

"Now," he said to these policemen, "I am go- 
ing to assign you men to the most honorable 
service you have ever done, the protection of an 
enemy, and the defence of religious liberty and 
free speech in the chief city of the United States. 
You all know who and what Dr. Ahlwart is. I 
am going to put you in charge of the hall where 
he lectures and hold you responsible for perfect 
order throughout the evening. I have no more 
sympathy with Jew baiting than you have. But 
this is a country where your people are free to 
think and speak as they choose in religious mat- 
ters, as long as they do not interfere with the 
peace and comfort of their neighbors, and Dr. 
Ahlwart is entitled to the same privilege. It 
should be your pride to see that he is protected 
in it; that will be the finest way of showing your 
appreciation of the liberty you yourselves enjoy 
under the American flag." The thirty saluted 
and marched silently off on their novel duty. 

When the Jew baiters came to the hall, looking 
for a mob of Jews, they could hardly believe their 
eyes, for they saw the place guarded at every 
approach and the interior lined by those uni- 
formed Jewish protectors. The agitator and his 
followers walked between rows of stern, solemn 
Jewish policemen, standing mute and stiff as 
statues. The Jews, moreover, who came bent on 
disturbing the meeting, were restrained by the 



40 , GOOD STORIES 

mere presence of their brethren, who stood before 
them charged with the duty of keeping the peace. 
When one did let his angry passion rise above 
control, a Jewish policeman quietly reached for 
him and firmly threw him out of the hall. The 
meeting failed utterly from lack of opposition, 
and the great national movement against the 
Jews was ruined, at the outset, by Mr. Roose- 
velt's illustration of the virtues of Jewish citizen- 
ship. 



FORMING THE ROUGH RIDERS 

Before he thought of raising a regiment of his 
own, Mr. Roosevelt tried other ways of going to 
the war with Spain. At first he wished to be 
appointed on General Fitzhugh Lee's staff, but 
finally preferred a place in the line. He turned 
to New York, in the hope that he might be made 
one of the field officers of the 71st Regiment 
from that state. The Governor, however, was 
embarrassed with many applications. 

At last, he adopted the plan of recruiting a 
regiment among the men of his old Wild West, 
and Secretary Alger offered to make him the 
colonel of such a command. Roosevelt's only 
military experience, however, had been gained in 
a four years' service with the New Yotk militia, 
in which he had risen to a captaincy. He wisely 
reflected that, while he was learning his new du- 
ties, the army would go off to Cuba, and leave 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 41 

him and his regiment behind on the training 
field. He therefore asked the Secretary of War 
to appoint him Heutenant-colonel and make Leon- 
ard Wood the colonel. Wood was a surgeon in 
the regular army and had been the physician in 
attendance on President McKinley. Although 
war was not his business, he had led a body of 
troops against the Apache Indians in an emer- 
gency and won a medal of honor. In the course 
of his service he had picked up a sound general 
knowledge of army methods. 

Roosevelt and Wood had never met until the 
former came to Washington as Assistant Secre- 
tary of the Navy. They had then been immedi- 
ately attracted to each other, and soon became 
fast friends. The surgeon had been fired with 
an ambition to lead a relief expedition to the 
Alaskan mining region on the Klondike the win- 
ter before, and had urged Roosevelt to join him. 
They were now equally eager to serve in the war, 
and Wood had tried in vain for an appointment 
from his own state, Massachusetts. He wel- 
comed the chance to join his friend in raising 
the Western regiment, and, with high ardor, they 
entered upon their duties. 

The plan of a Western regiment set the plains- 
men and the mountaineers aflame with excite- 
ment. They telegraphed offers of their services, 
singly and in hastily formed bands. People be- 
gan to speak of the picturesque organization as 
'The Rough Riders," a term borrowed from the 
circus. The idea seized upon the imagination 



42 GOOD STORIES 

of adventurous Eastern youth. From the South, 
and indeed from all directions, applications flowed 
in a torrent. 

No one caught the contagion of the Roosevelt 
spirit more quickly than the college athlete of 
the East. Young men of education and fortune 
pressed more earnestly for a chance to serve in 
the ranks under Roosevelt, than to gain commis- 
sions from the President as officers of other com- 
mands. While he had to decline applications by 
the thousands, Mr. Roosevelt determined to ac- 
cept a sufficient number of picked men, of ath- 
letic tastes, from the older states to form a troop. 

A most remarkable lot of private soldiers they 
proved to be, when they came to Washington to 
be mustered in. There were among them grad- 
uates of all the famous colleges, members of the 
most fashionable clubs of New York and Boston, 
and troopers from the fancy mounted militia of 
the big cities. There were the celebrated tennis 
champion and the next best player; a captain of 
a Harvard crew and one of his men; two foot- 
ball players from Princeton; two noted track 
athletes from Yale; two polo players from Mr. 
Roosevelt's old team at Oyster Bay; a celebrated 
steeplechase rider from New York; a captain of 
a Columbia crew, and there were New York po- 
licemen, anxious to serve again under their old 
Commissioner. 

As this unusual troop was about to be mus- 
tered in, Lieutenant-Colonel Roosevelt addressed 
a few remarks to them in this vein: "Gentle- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 43 

men: You have now reached the last point. If 
any one of you doesn't mean business, let him 
say so now. An hour from now it will be too 
late to back out. Once you are in, you've got to 
see it through. You've got to perform, without 
flinching, whatever duty is assigned to you, re- 
gardless of the difficulty or the danger attending 
it. You must know how to ride, you must know 
how to shoot, you must know how to live in the 
open. Absolute obedience to every command is 
your first lesson. No matter what comes you 
mustn't squeal. Think it over, all of you. If 
any man wants to withdraw, he will be gladly 
excused, for there are thousands who are anxious 
to have places in this regiment." 

It is needless to say that no one backed out. 



NICKNAMES IN THE RANKS 

In his book, "The Rough Riders," Colonel 
Roosevelt has given us an intimate glimpse of 
some of the characters in the regiment, as fol- 
lows: 

'The men generally gave one another nick- 
names, largely conferred in a spirit of derision, 
their basis lying in contrast. A brave but fas- 
tidious member of an Eastern club, who was 
serving in the ranks, was christened Tough Ike' ; 
and his bunkie, the man who shared his shelter- 
tent, and who was a decidedly rough cow- 
puncher, gradually acquired the name of The 



44 GOOD STORIES 

Dude.' One unlucky and simple-minded range- 
rider, who had never been east of the great 
plains in his Ufe, unwarily boasted that he had 
an aunt in New York, and ever afterward he 
went by the name of 'Metropolitan Bill/ A huge 
red-headed Irishman was named 'Sheeny Solo- 
mon/ A young Jew who developed into one of 
the best fighters in the regiment accepted with 
entire equanimity the name of Tork-chop/ We 
had quite a number of professional gamblers 
who, I am bound to say, usually made good sol- 
diers. One who was almost abnormally quiet and 
gentle was called 'Hell-roarer'; while another 
who, in point of language and deportment, was 
his exact antithesis, was known as 'Prayerful 
James.' " 



LAST WORDS TO THE ROUGH RIDERS 

When the Rough Riders were mustered out on 
September 15, 1898, Colonel Roosevelt gave them 
some famous words of advice similar to those he 
frequently gave in later months to the entire 
country. It was a direct, personal, and force- 
fully typical speech, credited with much potency 
in the lives of some of the men to whom it was 
made. In substance it was as follows: 

"Get action; do things; be sane; don't fritter 
away your time; create; act; take a place wher- 
ever you are and be somebody; get action — and 
don't get gay." 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 45 

SENATOR CULLOM'S LITTLE JOKE 

Many are the stories told of Colonel Roosevelt 
and his relation to the members of that famous 
regiment in after life. Senator Shelby M. Cul- 
lom of Illinois once discovered the loyalty of the 
Colonel to his field comrades when he was Presi- 
dent. The Senator had called at the White House 
and was told that the President was engaged. 

*'Who's there?" he asked of the doorkeeper. 

"Somebody who says he was in the Rough 
Riders," was the reply. 

**Well," observed the legislator, as he turned 
away, "what chance have I, then? I'm only a 
Senator." 

THE LOVER OF NATURE 

John Burroughs, the great naturalist, declared 
that he did not know a man with a keener and 
more comprehensive interest in Nature and wild 
life, an interest both scientific and human. Speak- 
ing of President Roosevelt's trip to the Yellow- 
stone Park in April, 1903, Burroughs said he was 
struck with the extent of his natural history 
knowledge and his trained powers of observation. 
On that occasion the naturalist was able to help 
the President identify only one bird. All the 
others the President recognized as quickly as 
Burroughs himself. 

It was while the President's party was in the 
Yellowstone that he remarked: 



46 GOOD STORIES 

"I heard a Bullock's oriole a little while agj^" 

"You may have heard one," was the polite ob- 
jection of a man familiar with the country, "but 
I doubt it. Those birds won't come for two 
weeks yet." 

*T caught two bird notes which could not be 
those of any bird except an oriole," the President 
insisted. 

"You may have the song twisted," observed a 
friend. 

As the members of the party were seated at 
supper in the cabin that evening Mr. Roosevelt 
suddenly laid down his knife and fork, exclaim- 
ing, "Look! Look!" 

On a shrub before the window was a Bullock's 
oriole. Nothing that happened on the whole trip 
seemed to please the President so much as that 
verification of his bird knowledge. 

After a visit to the President at Sagamore Hill 
in 1907, John Burroughs wrote that the one pas- 
sion of Roosevelt's life seemed to be natural his- 
tory, for a new warbler that had appeared in the 
woods "seemed an event that threw the affairs 
of state and the Presidential succession into the 
background." He told a political visitor at that 
time that it would be impossible for him to dis- 
cuss politics then, as he wanted to talk and hunt 
birds, and for that puipose he took his visitors 
with him. 

"Fancy," suggests Burroughs, "a President of 
the United States stalking rapidly across bushy 
fields to the woods, eager as a boy and filled with 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 47 

the one idea of showing to his visitors the black- 
throated green warbler!" 

On this walk the party passed a large and 
wide-spreading oak. The naturalist pointed to it 
and observed that it was a remarkable example 
of the noble tree. 

"Yes, and you see by the branching of that 
oak/' said the President, ''that when it grew up 
this wood was an open field, and maybe under 
the plough; it is only in fields that oaks take 
that form." 

*'That is true," agreed the naturalist, "but for 
the minute when I first observed the tree my 
mind didn't take in that fact." 



KNEW ANIMALS AND BIRDS 

"Do you see anything wrong with the head of 
that pronghorn?" asked Roosevelt as he handed 
Burroughs a copy of his "Ranch Life and the 
Hunting Trail." 

It was a picture of a hunter bringing in an 
animal on the saddle behind him. Burroughs 
saw nothing wrong with the picture. The Presi- 
dent took the naturalist into one of his rooms, 
v/here the mounted head of a pronghorn hung 
over the mantel, and pointed out that the eye 
was "close under the root of the horn," whereas 
the artist. Remington, had placed the eye in the 
picture two inches too low. 

Mr. Roosevelt's interest in birds and natural 



48 GOOD STORIES 

history of course dated from his boyhood. Early 
in his teens he published a list of the birds in 
Franklin County, New York. He kept a bird 
journal at the age of 14, when he was in Egypt, 
and on that tour with his father up the Nile to 
Luxor his success as a naturalist was foreshad- 
owed, for he made a collection of Egyptian birds 
found in the Nile Valley which is now in the 
Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D. C. 

When he went to Harvard, it was his ambi- 
tion to be a naturalist, but there he became con- 
vinced, it is said, that all the out-of-door worlds 
of natural history had been conquered and that 
the only worlds remaining were to be conquered 
through the laboratory, the microscope, and the 
scalpel. 



A REALLY GREAT NATURALIST 

In his natural history studies, as in all his 
other undertakings. Colonel Roosevelt was most 
painstaking and accurate and on more than one 
occasion he emerged triumphant from a dispute 
with professional naturalists over some rare 
specimen. 

Scientists generally acknowledged the Colonel 
an authority in this field. Carl Akeley, head of 
the elephant-hunting expedition in Africa for the 
American Museum of Natural History, and now 
connected with the Elephant Hall of the museum, 
paid tribute after the Colonel's death to this 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 49 

phase of his accomplishments. Mr. Akeley, while 
hunting elephants in the African wilds, encoun- 
tered the Roosevelt expedition there and hunted 
with the party for some days. 

**Colonel Roosevelt was an amateur naturalist, 
and yet he was a naturalist of splendid training," 
said Mr. Akeley. **He had the keen eye and mind 
of the ideal naturalist and he was further aided 
by a phenomenal memory such as few men pos- 
sess. He found infinite joy in studying wild ani- 
mal life in its native haunts, and the least of his 
pleasure in killing it. His greatest pleasures lay 
in seeing and learning, thereby proving him an 
ideal naturahst. 

"Many of his statements on the subject of his 
explorations and discoveries were twisted and 
ridiculed by hostile and ignorant critics. His 
enemies made great fun of the River of Doubt, 
the uncharted stream he traced to its source in 
the South American wilds. But the facts remain 
that he rendered a great service to the science 
of geography by locating it exactly, and that the 
Brazilian Government named it after him, *Rio 
Teodoro.' 

''Incidentally, I believe that his exposure and 
trials on that Brazilian trip led to his death." 

As a nature-lover at all times the President 
seems to have stood the test of being able to see 
little things as v/ell as big things, and of seeing 
without effort and premeditation. Yet a degree 
of patience was required for the accumulation of 
his knowledge in these fields. The warblers, 



50 GOOD STORIES 

both in color and song, are bewildering to the ex- 
perienced ornithologist. Nevertheless, John Bur- 
roughs says, the President had mastered every 
one of them. 

He wrote Burroughs one day that he had just 
come in from w^alking with Mrs. Roosevelt about 
the White House grounds looking up the arriving 
warblers. 

"Most of the warblers," he said, "were up in 
the tops of the trees, and I could not get a 
glimpse of them, but there was one with chest- 
nut cheeks, with bright yellow behind the cheeks, 
and a yellow breast thickly streaked with black, 
which has puzzled me. I saw the black burrian, 
the summer yellow bird, and the black-throated 
green." 

But he did not let his yellow-breasted visitor 
go away without learning his name. A few days 
later he wrote: "I have identified the warbler. 
It is the Cape May." 



HIS LOVE OF SONG BIRDS 

The ordinary hunter or ranchman would hardly 
interrupt his story of cattle and game to write 
such a passage as this about song birds, as Mr. 
Roosevelt did in one of his hunting books: 

"The meadow-lark is a singer of a higher or- 
der (than the plain skylark), deserving to rank 
with the best. Its song has length, variety, 
power, and rich melody; and there is in it some- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 51 

times a cadence of wild sadness inexpressit)ly 
touching. Yet I cannot say that either song 
would appeal to others as it appeals to me, for 
to me it comes forever laden with a hundred 
memories and associations ; with the sight of dim 
hills reddening in the dawn, with the breath of 
the cold morning winds blowing across lonely 
plains, with the scent of flowers on the sunlight 
prairie, with the motion of fiery horses, with all 
the strong thrill of eager and buoyant life. I 
doubt if any man can judge dispassionately of 
the bird songs of his own country; he cannot dis- 
associate them from the sights and sounds of the 
land that is so dear to him." 



TALE OF A SHREW 

Mr. Roosevelt's eyes were continually alert for 
the unusual when on hunting excursions. Once 
while in the Selkirks after caribou, with a hunter 
and an Indian guide, he amused himself while 
resting after lunch by getting a specimen of rare 
animal life for a friend. He says : 

"I was sitting on a great stone by the edge of 
the brook, idly gazing at a water-wren which had 
come up from a short flight — I can call it noth- 
ing else — underneath the water, and was singing 
sweetly from a spray-splashed log. Suddenly a 
small animal swam across the little pool at my 
feet. It was less in size than a mouse, and as 
it paddled rapidly underneath the water its body 



52 GOOD STORIES 

seemed flattened like a disk and was spangled 
with tiny bubbles like specks of silver. It was 
a water-shrew, a rare little beast. I sat motion- 
less and watched both the shrew and the water- 
wren — water-ousel, as it should rightly be named. 
The latter, emboldened by my quiet, presently 
flew by me to a little rapids close at hand, light- 
ing on a round stone and then slipping uncon- 
cernedly into the swift water. Anon he emerged, 
stood on another stone, and trilled a few bars, 
though it was late in the season for singing, and 
then dived into the stream again. * ♦ * In 
a minute or two the shrew caught my eye again. 
It got into a little shallow eddy and caught a 
minute fish, which it carried to a half -sunken 
stone and greedily devoured, tugging voraciously 
at it as it held it down with its paws. Then its 
evil genius drove it into a small puddle along- 
side the brook, where I instantly pounced on it 
and slew it, for I knew a friend in the Smithson- 
ian at Washington who would have coveted it 
greatly." 

FONDNESS FOR FISTICUFFS 

A characteristic anecdote of Colonel Roosevelt's 
■ fondness for fisticuffs was related after his death 
by Mr. Robert J. Mooney, formerly associate 
publisher of the Chicago Inter Ocean. The scene 
was the President's office in the White House 
during the presidential campaign of 1904. Mr. 
Mooney said: 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 53 

"I was in Washington August 18, 1904, being 
then on the editorial staff of the New York 
Tribune. A boyhood chum of mine — I do not 
care to mention his name, as he is still in the 
Government service — met me and asked if I knew 
the President and could get him an interview. 

"I replied I knew William Loeb, the President's 
secretary, and would do my best. I called up 
Mr. Loeb, who told me to bring my friend to the 
White House. We went. There was a line of 
more than 100 people waiting. I sent my card 
in to Mr. Loeb, who came out in a few minutes 
and beckoned us to come in. 

"In his private office the President hurried to 
greet us and said to my friend — who was ama- 
teur boxing and wrestling champion of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia: 

** *You are the finest looking man in boxing togs 
I ever saw. Now tell me — how did you knock out 
Blank that night I saw you at the club?* 

"*Why, Mr. President, it was a punch like 
this,' he replied. He illustrated it in the air. 

" *Show it to me ! Show it to me ! Hit me on 
the chin as you hit him.* 

"My friend did it, but softly. 

" *No, no ; that won't do. Hit me hard. Hit 
me the way you hit him.' 

"My friend did it. He gave the President an 
awful punch in the jaw. 

"That's it, that's it. I've got it now,' ex- 
claimed the President delightedly. 'Now let me 
try it on you.' 



54 GOOD STORIES 

"He did. He hit my friend and sent him reel- 
ing. 

" Twe sure got it/ the Colonel said. *I'm going 
to try it tomorrow on Lodge and Garfield. Won't 
they squirm?' And the President laughed like a 
boy. 

"I said to him: 'Mr. President, youVe got the 
strongest back I ever saw.' 

" *Yes, it is quite strong/ he replied, immensely 
pleased. 

"Then I told him our errand. 

" 'Yes, I know all about you,' he said to my 
friend. 'No man in the service is more entitled 
to promotion than you. You shall have it to- 
morrow.' 

"We had been there an hour, talking and 
scuffling. I was scared for fear some secret serv- 
ice man might see us from the window. 

"I learned afterward that among the waiting 
crowd were a member of the firm of J. P. Morgan 
& Co.; General Boynton, one of the managers of 
the Associated Press, and several politicians of 
national fame, who wished to see the President 
about his campaign." 



ROOSEVELT AS A HUNTER 

Colonel Roosevelt's fame as a hunter of big 
game is well founded. It was characteristic of 
him that he always obeyed his guides, and did 
his full part in every expedition. By the unani- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 55 

mous assertion of every man who ever went on 
a hunting trip that involved camp life for a con- 
siderable length of time, there is nothing like 
participation in such an expedition for bringing 
out and making clear the fundamental realities 
of character. It reveals both virtues and vices, 
strengths and w^eaknesses, and emphasizes them 
all. Not only are many of the restrictions and 
inhibitions created and enforced in ordinary com- 
munity intercourse suddenly removed or weak- 
ened, but new demands are made for the endur- 
ance of inconveniences and the performance of 
hard and distasteful work. 

For these reasons it is important to know 
what the celebrated hunter of big game in 
Africa, R. J. Cuninghame, says about Colonel 
Roosevelt as a companion on a hunting trip 
that was as long, as hard, and dangerous as a 
hunting trip could well be. 

Mr. Cuninghame is a man not at all likely to 
give undeserved praise, and when he declares 
that the Colonel, on his famous African trip, 
met with extraordinary success all the require- 
ments of an ideal associate in the wilds, He 
speaks with high authority and his verdict is 
decisive. It is to be noted, too, that among the 
virtues ascribed to the man so often accused of 
rash impulsiveness, of indocility to discipline, 
and disregard for the judgment of others, was 
that of scrupulous, cheerful, prompt obedience 
to the orders given and regulations laid down by 
the leader of the expedition. He submitted even 



56 GOOD STORIES 

when he did not understand, and though he 
sometimes questioned, it was after, not before, 
he obeyed. Hardships did not discourage him, 
troubles did not make him lose his temper, and 
dangers attracted him instead of dismaying him. 
This was the spirit of the true sportsman. 

Mr. Cuninghame makes it quite clear that 
there survived in the Colonel most strongly the 
joy in the chase and its triumphant ending that 
in the innumerable generations of the past was 
the hunter's reward for the labor on which, 
more than on any other, depended the welfare 
of the tribe. 

He told the following story of "one very near 
squeak" the Colonel had. Said he: 

"The Colonel was determined to get an ele- 
phant, and a tusker at that. I told him what 
that meant, and how much risk there was, but 
he said he was willing to face it. That was the 
Colonel all over. Tell him the risks and he 
would size them up quietly. If he decided they 
were worth while, that was all there was to it. 
He just went ahead and took them without 
saying another word. 

"Well, we found an elephant in a forest on 
Genia Mountain. We had been hunting for three 
days, and it was really hard work for a man 
of the Colonel's bulk in that heat and at that 
altitude, 11,000 feet. At last I caught sight 
through a thick bush of elephant hide and a 
tusk, about thirty-five feet away, just enough to 
tell me it was a fine specimen. I pointed it out 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 57 

to the Colonel, and he fired with complete cool- 
ness and got the elephant in the ear and dropped 
him. 

"As the shot went off the forest all around 
roared with trumpetings. We were in the midst 
of a herd of cows and young bulls, and one of 
the latter thrust his head through the bushes 
right over the Colonel's head. I was right be- 
hind him and fired at once and bowled it over. 
Then I rushed up to the Colonel and said: *Are 
you all right, sir?' But I could see he was before 
I spoke. He hadn't turned a hair. At any 
moment the cows might have blundered through 
the bush over us, but he never thought of that. 
He went up to the old chap he had killed and 
gave it the coup-de-grace and then let himself 
loose. I never saw a man so boyishly jubilant." 

Colonel Roosevelt danced and shouted with 
glee after shooting his first "tusker." But he 
was not a game butcher, and, though his killing 
usually lacked as excuse the primordial need 
for food, it was as far as possible from being 
an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter. 

For a long time after Roosevelt's return from 
Africa he was often referred to throughout the 
world as "Bwana Tumbo." That was the name 
given to him by the natives of Africa, and 
meant "Big Chief." 

NO SECTARIAN PREJUDICES 

In Rome occurred one of the most sensational 



58 GOOD STORIES 

incidents of Mr. Roosevelt's career, and there 
have been few which so well illustrate his char- 
acter. An audience had been arranged for him 
with the Pope. Some time before the Pope had 
refused to see former Vice-President Fairbanks 
because that gentleman had made an address to 
the Methodists in Rome. 

A message was conveyed to Colonel Roosevelt 
through the American Ambassador in the fol- 
lowing terms: 

"The Holy Father will be delighted to grant 
audience to Mr. Roosevelt on April 5 and hopes 
nothing will arise to prevent, such as the much- 
regretted incident which made the reception of 
Mr. Fairbanks impossible." 

The Colonel immediately sent the following 
to Ambassador Leishman: 

"It would be a real pleasure to me to be pre- 
sented to the Holy Father, for whom I entertain 
a high respect, both personally and as the head 
of a great Church. I fully recognize his entire 
right to receive or not to receive whomsoever he 
chooses, for any reason that seems good to him, 
and if he does not receive me I shall not for one 
moment question the propriety of his action. 

"On the other hand, I, in my turn, must de- 
cline to make any conditions which in any way 
limit my freedom. I trust on April 5 he will find 
it convenient to receive me." 

The answer was conveyed through the Ambas- 
sador that "the audience could not take place 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 59 

except on the understanding expressed in the 
former message." 

Colonel Roosevelt instantly replied: *Troposed 
presentation is, of course, now impossible." 

The Methodists of Rome undertook to make 
capital out of the incident and issued a statement 
attacking the Pope. Colonel Roosevelt immedi- 
ately rebuked them by cancelling an appointment 
he had made to meet them at a reception at 
Mr. Leishman's home. He wanted it made clear 
that he had no sectarian prejudices and had 
stood simply on his rights as an American 
citizen. 



TRUE AMERICAN FARMER 

President Roosevelt reserved one room for 
himself in the White House. It was formerly 
the Cabinet room, and here he was most at home, 
surrounded with a large variety of character- 
istic keepsakes— a belt of cartridges, a sword, 
a Russian revolver which Admiral Togo sent 
him, the candlestick used in sealing the treaty 
of peace between Japan and Russia at Ports- 
mouth, and many original drawings of cartoons 
relating to himself. One of these represented a 
keen-eyed American farmer, gray-haired and 
shaggy-bearded, with his stocking feet on a 
footrest before a fire, and a lamp at his elbow, 
by the light of which he was reading the Presi- 
dent's message. 



60 GOOD STORIES 

'That's the old boy I am working for in the 
White House/' President Roosevelt enthusias- 
tically explained to a caller whose attention had 
been attracted to the cartoon. **The future of 
this nation rests with him. He will never ask 
to have the laws set aside. He will never use 
dynamite as an argument. He is a true 
American." 



MET MEN WHO DO THINGS 

During his Presidency Mr. Roosevelt was 
democratic in his relations with not only men 
who had ideas to give him, but with men who 
were of service to him in living the strenuous 
Hfe. "Professor" Mike Donovan at the V»liite 
House boxed with him, and a jiu-jitsu artist 
taught the President the secrets of that science. 

In explaining why he had *'as a practical man 
of high ideals, who had always endeavored to 
put his ideals in practice," conferred with Mr. 
Harriman, the railroad magnate, and Mr. Arch- 
bold of the Standard Oil Company, the former 
President made these assertions: 

"I have always acted and shall always act 
upon the theory that if, while in public office, 
there is any man from whom I think I can gain 
anything of value to the Government, I will 
send for him and talk it over with him, no 
matter how widely I differ from him on other 
points. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 61 

"I actually sent for, while I was President, 
trust magnates, labor leaders, Socialists, John L. 
Sullivan, 'Battling' Nelson, Dr. Lyman Abbott. 
I could go on indefinitely with a list of people 
whom at various times I have seen or sent for. 
And if I am elected President again I shall con- 
tinue exactly the same course of conduct, without 
the deviation of a hair's breadth. And if ever 
I tind that my virtue is so frail that it won't 
stand being brought into contact with either 
trust magnates or a Socialist or a labor leader, 
I will get out of public life." 



FACING A MOB 

Colonel Roosevelt was always happy where 
things were happening. He said once that he 
liked to be where something was going on, and 
he generally managed to make something happen 
where he was. Danger aroused in him a keen 
sense of enjoyment, as was illustrated in a small 
way in Victor, Colorado, during the campaign of 
1900. The opposition in Colorado to the Re- 
publican position on the coinage issue was bitter, 
and a mob tried to prevent him from speaking in 
Victor. One man hit him in the breast with a 
piece of scantling six feet long from which an 
insulting banner had been torn. Another man 
tried to strike him in the face, but was prevented 
by a miner. One observer said afterward: 

**When the storm of the mob swept up to him 



62 GOOD STORIES 

I st(X)d on the lower step of the Pullman sleeper 
with George W. Ogden. Ogden exclaimed: 

'''See the Colonel's face!' 

"I looked. Rocks were flying over him and 
the scanthng waved savagely. And he? He was 
smiling and his eyes were dancing; and he was 
as composed as though he were approaching the 
entrance to his own home among friends." 

When it was all over he exclaimed enthusias- 
tically : 

"This is magnificent^ Why, it's the best time 
I've had since I started. I wouldn't have missed 
it for anything." 

He seemed to enjoy everything in the same 
enthusiastic way, and he had "a bully time" 
throughout the campaign, which resulted in the 
triumphant election of McKinley and Roosevelt. 

SCANDALIZED THE SENATORS 

President Roosevelt probably was the only 
occupant of the White House who ever had 
boxing matches within its sacred precincts. Mike 
Donovan used to go there frequently to meet the 
President. Mr. Roosevelt also used to fence with 
his old commander. General Leonard Wood, and 
once nearly disabled the General, it is said. He 
also staged a motion-picture play in the White 
House, showing his old Oklahoma friend, Jack 
Abernathy, killing wolves v/ith his bare hands. 
Jack was among those present, and so were 
General Wood and several Ambassadors. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 63 

V 

It gave great scandal to many reverend 
Senators to see the way in which such successors 
of Leatherstocking as Abernathy and Bill Sewall 
went to the White House and got the President's 
ear for hours at a time. Before Senator Hoar 
had come to know Mr. Roosevelt as he after- 
wards did, he went to the White House to 
remonstrate with him for appointing Ben Daniels 
marshal of Arizona. Mr. Hoar was one of the 
most dignified and sedate men in the Senate. 

"Mr. President/' said Mr. Hoar in horrified 
accents, "do you know anything about the char- 
acter of this man Daniels you have appointed to 
be marshal of Arizona?" 

"Why, yes, I think so," said Mr. Roosevelt; 
"he was a member of my regiment." 

"Do you know," said Mr. Hoar, impressively, 
"that he has killed three men?" 

The President was scandahzed. "You don't 
mean it," he said. 

"It is a fact," said Mr. Hoar. 

The President was thoroughly indignant. He 
pounded his fist on the table. "When I get hold 
of Daniels," he said, "I will read him the riot 
act. He told me he'd only killed two." 



CALLING A SPADE A SPADE 

Mr. Roosevelt had a vigorous vocabulary and 
was never backward about using it in a fight. 
He branded so many men as liars that a news- 



64 GOOD STORIES 

paper humorist coined the name "Ananias Club" 
and used it to include most of those who had 
incurred Mr. Roosevelt's enmity. The name 
stuck and the laugh lasted, but it did not deter 
Mr. Roosevelt from continuing to call people 
liars, in plain language, when the occasion and 
the circumstances seemed to justify him in 
doing so. 



BLINDED BY A BLOW 

In all his athletic training and contests Mr. 
Roosevelt asked no favors of an opponent. He 
liked to give and take the hardest blows in 
boxing, as in politics, and no opponent was ex- 
pected to "go easy" with him, when he was in 
the White House or at any other time. Nothing 
illustrates this rule better than an episode which 
the Colonel himself made public, only after the 
lapse of twelve years. In October, 1917, in the 
course of an interview with newspaper men, he 
told this story in explanation of his relinquish- 
ing the practice of boxing: 

"When I was President I used to box with 
one of my aides, a young captain in the artillery. 
One day he cross-countered me and broke a 
blood vessel in my left eye. I don't know 
whether this is known, but I never have been 
able to see out of that eye since. I thought, as 
only one good eye was left me, I would not box 
any longer." 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 65 

This story was too promising for the news- 
paper men to let drop without endeavoring to 
have it amplified by the soldier who delivered 
the blow. 

A few days later, in the New York Times, 
appeared this interview with Colonel Dan T. 
Moore, of the United States Army: 

CAMP MEADE, Md., Oct. 27, 1917.— Colonel 
Dan T. Moore, of the 310th Field Artillery Regi- 
ment, 79th Division, National Army, admits ht 
struck the blow that destroyed the sight oi 
Colonel Roosevelt's eye. He said: 

*1 am sorry I struck the blow. Fm sorry the 
Colonel told about it, and Fm sorry my identity 
has been so quickly uncovered. I give you my 
word I never knew I had blinded the Colonel 
in one eye until I read his stat-^-^ent in the paper 
a few days ago. I instantly knew, however, that 
I was the man referred to, because there was 
no other answering the description he gave who 
could have done it. I shall write the Colonel a 
letter expressing my regrets at the serious re- 
sults of the blow. 

**I was a military aide at the White House in 
1905. The boxers in the White House gym 
were the President, Kermit Roosevelt, and my- 
self. The President went farther afield for his 
opponents in other sports, but when he wanted 
to don the boxing gloves he chose Kermit or 
myself." 

'Tell about the blow that blinded the Presi- 
dent." 



66 GOOD STORIES 

"I might as well try to tell about the shell that 
killed any particular soldier in this war. When 
you put on gloves with President Roosevelt it 
was a case of fight all the way, and no man in 
the ring with him had a chance to keep track of 
particular blows. A good fast referee might 
have known, but nobody else. The Colonel 
wanted plenty of action, and he usually got it. 
He had no use for a quitter or one who gave 
ground, and nobody but a man willing to fight 
all the time and all the way had a chance with 
him. That's my only excuse for the fact that 
I seriously injured him. There was no chance 
to be careful of the blows. He simply wouldn't 
have stood for it." 

Colonel Roosevelt, when informed of Colonel 
Moore's statement, said: "There is nothing more 
to say about the matter." 

There was Roosevelt the Man all over. What 
other man, in public or in private life, would 
have suffered such an injury in silence, and 
concealed it from even his intimate friends, for 
a period of twelve years? 



SHOT BY A MANIAC 

On October 14, 1912, when the Presidential 
campaign was at its height. Colonel Roosevelt 
had arrived in Milwaukee when he was shot by 
John Schrank, a New Yorker who was found to 
be a maniac. The Colonel was just seating him- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 67 

self in an automobile for the drive to the hall 
where he was to deliver an important address 
when Schrank sent the bullet into his chest at 
short range. 

On the instant there was a movement to deal 
summarily with Schrank, but Colonel Roosevelt 
was cool, and himself restrained the crowd until 
Schrank was taken properly into custody. 

The bullet, having passed through the candi- 
date's heavy overcoat and his other clothing, 
pages of manuscript and his spectacle case, had 
penetrated only two inches into the right breast. 
He was able to proceed to the Auditorium, and 
against the advice of friends and physicians 
made a speech lasting fifty-three minutes. 

This feat, which drew the applause of the 
world and caused all Americans, irrespective of 
their political beliefs, to glory in such an indom- 
itable will and such fortitude, seemed to produce 
no ill effects. The candidate went to his home 
in Oyster Bay within a fortnight after being 
taken to a hospital in Chicago, and there con- 
tinued his campaign by statements and messages 
to his followers through prominent Progressive 
poHtical leaders. 



HOW HE FELT AFTER BEING SHOT 

Here is a part of the speech Colonel Roosevelt 
made in Milwaukee just after the bullet of 
erratic John Schrank had lodged in his chest. 



68, GOOD STORIES 

It was declaratory in that dramatic moment of 
his joy in life and leadership: 

"I do not care a rap about being shot, not a 
rap. The bullet is in me now, so that I cannot 
make a very long speech. But I will try my 
best. First of all, I want to say this about my- 
self: I have altogether too many important 
things to think of to pay any heed or feel any 
concern over my own death. Now I would not 
speak to you insincerely within five minutes of 
being shot. I am telling you the literal truth 
when I say that my concern is for many other 
things. 

*T want you to understand that I am ahead 
of the game anyway. No man has had a happier 
life than I have had, a happy life in every way. 
I have been able to do certain things that I 
greatly wished to do, and I am interested in 
doing other things." 



PROVED CLEANNESS OF LIFE 

While the campaign was in progress stories 
were spread widely by word of mouth that 
Colonel Roosevelt was a drunkard. He deter- 
mined that, as soon as this slander appeared in 
any responsible newspaper, he would settle it 
for all time by a libel suit. Similar stories, he 
said, were circulated to this day about other 
public men equally guiltless and now dead, be- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 69 

cause they never deemed them worthy of contra- 
diction in their hfetime. 

Presently the charge appeared in a newspaper 
called Iron Ore, published in Ishpeming, Mich., 
and Colonel Roosevelt promptly sued for libel. 
The suit was tried in May, 1913, and the array 
of witnesses that the plaintiff produced never 
was equaled in any suit in recent times. Ad- 
mirals, generals, cabinet officers, senators, gov- 
ernors, authors, newspaper men, and, in fact, all 
the men who had been intimately associated with 
the Colonel, appeared to give their testimony, 
and they testified not only to his temperance in 
drinking, but to his cleanness of life and speech. 
It was a tribute to be proud of, and the testi- 
mony completely exonerated him from the loose 
and unfounded charge. 



NEEDED A PUNCH 

"Better faithful than famous," used to be one 
of his characteristic sayings, wrote Jacob Riis 
in his life of the former President. "It has been 
his rule all his life. A classmate of Roosevelt 
told me recently of being present at a Harvard 
reunion where a professor told of asking a 
graduate what would be his work in life. 

" *0,' said he, 'really, you know, nothing seems 
to me much worth while.' Roosevelt got up and 
said to the professor: 

" That fellow ought to have been knocked 



70 GOOD STORIES 

on the head. I would take my chances with a 
blackmailing policeman sooner than with him.'" 



HE WAS NOT THERE 

An old story about Mr. Roosevelt dates from 
his term as president of the old New York City 
Board of Police Commissioners, in 1896. Com- 
missioner Roosevelt had been giving a little 
dinner to postoffice officials from Washington 
whom he had known there while United States 
Civil Service Commissioner. 

"I gave it," he told a newspaper man, "because 
of their hearty co-operation with me in civil 
service reform." 

"Was Fourth Assistant Robert Maxwell 
there?" — ^Maxwell being one official who noto- 
riously hadn't "co-operated" to any alarming 
extent. 

"No, no," came back with the Roosevelt snap, 
"and you mustn't be such a wag, either I" 



SUPERLATIVELY BRAVE 

The great courage of Mr. Roosevelt and his 
lack of fear were shown after he was shot in 
Milwaukee on October 14, 1912. When he had 
recovered from his wound he was told that he 
was foolhardy to make a speech after he had 
been shot. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 71 

"Why," said Roosevelt in reply, "you know I 
didn't think I had been mortally wounded. If I 
had been mortally wounded I would have bled 
from the lungs. When I got into the motor I 
coughed hard three times and put my hand up 
to my mouth; as I did not find any blood I 
thought I was not seriously hurt and went on 
with my speech." 

It is remembered that when his physician on 
this occasion urged him to return to the hotel 
and not go to the Auditorium to speak, the 
Colonel replied, "I will deliver this speech or die, 
one or the other." 

When he completed this memorable address 
his shoes were filled with blood that had rushed 
from his gaping chest wound. The Colonel dis- 
played heroic courage of the highest type. 



HIS FRIEND UNDERSTOOD 

To show the live sympathy that all who had 
been associated with him had expected, a story 
is told that an old comrade in arms approached 
him and said: "Mr. President, I have been in 
jail a year for killing a gentleman." 

"How did you do it?" asked the President, 
inquiring for the circumstances. 

"Thirty-eight on a forty-five frame," replied 
the man, thinking that the only interest the 
President had was that of a comrade who wanted 
to know with what kind of a tool the trick was 



72 GOOD STORIES 

done. His reference to this joke, in a telegram 
to a Western friend immediately after he was 
shot in Milwaukee, mystified so many people, 
who took it for anything from delirium to a 
private wire code, that he had to explain it. 

"Probably a .38 on a .45 frame,'' he had tele- 
graphed. 



T. R.'S CURIOSITY SATISFIED 

President Roosevelt took a dignitary out \?ith 
him for a stroll one afternoon, and in the course 
of the walk sighted a steep and rocky knoll, 
toward which he directed his course. He turned 
to his companion and observed as they began 
making the ascent: "We must get up to the 
top here," and after much panting and laboring 
the feat was accomplished. 

"And now, Mr. President," asked the official, 
"may I ask why we are up here?" 

"Why, I came up here," returned Roosevelt, 
laughing, "to see if you could make it." 



HAVE YOU EVER READ IT? 

Mr. Roosevelt was a tireless reader of books, 
and on his long railroad trips usually carried half 
a dozen volumes. But the side pocket of his 
traveling coat always held one stoutly bound, 
well-thumbed book — a copy of "Plutarch's Lives." 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 73 

On campaign tours and pleasure jaunts he took 
a daily half-hour dose of Plutarch. 

"Fve read this little volume close to a thou- 
sand times," he said one day, "but it is ever 
new." 



A GREAT MAN'S CREED 

"Mr. Roosevelt's creed?" wrote Jacob Riis, his 
close friend for many years in police work in 
New York. "Find it in a speech he made to the 
Bible Society. *If we read the Book aright,' he 
said, 'we read a book that teaches us to go 
forth and do the work of the Lord in the world 
as we find it; to try to make things better in the 
world, even if only a little better, because we 
have lived in it. That kind of work can be done 
only by a man who is neither a weakling nor a 
coward; by a man who, in the fullest sense of 
the word, is a true Christian, like Greatheart, 
Bunyan's hero.' " 



"JUSTICE, MERCY, HUMILITY" 

A message from Theodore Roosevelt was 
inserted in the Bibles given in 1917-18 to the 
American fighting men by the New York Bible 
Society. This message read: 

*The teachings of the New Testament are 
foreshadowed in Micah's verse: *What more 



74 GOOD STORIES 

doth the Lord require of thee than to do justice, 
and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy 
Godr 

**Do justice; and therefore fight valiantly 
against the armies of Gennany and Turkey, for 
these nations in this crisis stand for the reign 
of Moloch and Beelzebub on this earth. 

"Love mercy; treat prisoners well; succor the 
wounded; treat every woman as if she were your 
sister; care for the little children, and be tender 
with the old and helpless. 

"Walk humbly ; you will do so if you study the 
life and teachings of the Saviour." 

THE COLONEL'S FORTITUDE 

"Colonel Roosevelt's life," said Judge Ben 
Lindsey at a memorial meeting in Chicago, "was 
marked always by a fortitude which nothing 
could frighten. During the free silver campaign 
he went to Cripple Creek, the very center of the 
silver movement, to fight for the gold standard. 

"His visit began by the citizens pelting him 
with stones. It ended by Theodore Roosevelt 
winning the population over. The same thing 
occurred in Denver." 

THAT BOY WILL NOT FORGET 

During a visit to Palo Alto, Cal., Colonel 
Roosevelt, standing on the platform of his rail- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 75 

way car, singled out a wide-eyed boy just at the 
edge of the platform and made of him a hero in 
Boyville by leaning down and saying to him in 
a series of explosive sentences: 

"Young man, be game, but be decent. If you 
are game, but not decent, it would be better to 
hunt you out of society." 

The little fellow said, **Yes, sir!" and edged 
away to the outer rim of the crowd to think it 
over. 



HE ALWAYS DID 

"Anyway, Fve had a corking time!" Theodore 
Roosevelt said back in the '80s when beaten at 
the polls for Mayor of New York. **IVe had a 
corking time," he repeated in March, 1909, turn- 
ing over the Presidency to William Howard Taft. 
And on January 6, 1919, in the dawn, though no 
one mortal heard, would it not have been like 
him, glancing back at the broad roofs on Saga- 
more Hill, ere he hurried on to seek out Quentin 
in the shining ranks of the young men "gone 
west," to have said, yet once more, that he had 
had a corking time? He always did. 



THE WIDOW'S MIGHT 

On one of President Roosevelt's Southern trips 
his train stopped at Charlotte, N. C. A com- 



76 GOOD STORIES 

mittee of women, led by Mrs. Thomas J. Jackson, 
widow of General Stonewall Jackson, was at the 
depot to greet him. When, he was introduced he 
referred to himself as by right a Southerner, and 
then, being introduced to Mrs. Jackson, he added 
a remark which simply flashed through the 
South. 

"What? The widow of great Stonewall Jack- 
son? Why, it is worth the whole trip down here 
to have a chance to shake your hand," and he 
reminded her that he had appointed her grand- 
son to a cadetship at West Point. 

NOW HE V/AS SAFE 

Mr. Roosevelt once told this story at a Cabinet 
meeting in Washington: As President, on a 
Western trip, an old Rough Rider of his boarded 
the train and renewed their acquaintance. Later 
the President received a letter from the cowboy 
asking for $150 to help defend himself against a 
charge of stealing horses. The Colonel sent the 
money. A month later he received a letter from 
the cowboy thanking him for the money, but 
saying that he no longer needed it, as his polit- 
ical party "had elected their candidate for dis- 
trict attorney." 

WHY OUR NAVY MAKES HITS 

At the beginning of Mr. Roosevelt's first ad- 
ministration as President he insisted on frequent 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 77 

target practice for the navy. He requested and 
received one very large appropriation for ammu- 
nition, and Congress expressed amazement when 
he demanded almost immediately more money. 
Asked what had happened to the first fund, he 
said: 

"Every cent has been spent for powder and 
shot, and every bit of powder and shot has been 
fired." 

When he was asked what he intended doing 
with the additional sum, he said: 

"I shall use every dollar of that, too, within 
the next thirty days in practice shooting. That's 
what ammunition is made for — to bum." 

Soon after that Mr. Roosevelt, as President, 
prescribed that officers of the army, navy, and 
marine corps should ride ninety miles in three 
days as an endurance test. He rode ninety-eight 
miles himself in a driving storm of rain, snow, 
and sleet in one day. He left the White House 
at 3:40 a. m., rode to Wan-enton, Va., and got 
back to the White House at 8:30 p. m. 



HE'D HAVE DONE IT, TOO 

James Bliss Townsend, who was born in 
Oyster Bay and had been a friend of Roosevelt 
from boyhood, told at a dinner after his death 
that he went to Colonel Roosevelt in 1916 and 
asked him what he would have done in the 
Lusitania case. 



78 GOOD STORIES 

Colonel Roosevelt, according to Mr. Townsend, 
said that hindsight, of course, was easier to 
show than foresight, but that if he had been 
President he would have sent for Ambassador von 
Bernstorff immediately after the advertisements 
warning passengers not to travel on the Lusi- 
tania were printed in the newspapers. He said 
he would have asked if the advertisements were 
official, and if he had been told they were he 
would have given the German Ambassador and 
all of his staff two hours to get out and would 
have forced them to take passage on the Lusi- 
tania on what turned out to be her last voyage. 
Colonel Roosevelt added: 

"I am sure the Lusitania would not have been 
sunk had I been the President then." 



DOCTOR RELATES ANCEDOTES 

A year as physician at the White House en- 
ables Captain George A. Lung, Medical Corps, 
U. S. N., commanding the New York Naval Hos- 
pital, Brooklyn, to recount many anecdotes of 
Colonel Roosevelt. Dr. Lung was detailed to the 
White House in August, 1902, and remained with 
the President a year. 

"President Roosevelt was always a good 
patient," said Captain Lung. "He obeyed orders, 
though sometimes impatient about being kept 
in bed. He used to say: 'If I live long enough 
I will get well.' 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 79 

"On our trips he used to thrust his head out 
of the car windows to wave at folk at railroad 
stations. We cautioned him against the danger 
of being shot or bombed, and he would reply, 
^Better put me in a conning tower/ 

"In New Hampshire we were going up a steep 
hill. The Colonel got out and said he would hike 
it. I followed suit. The others remained in the 
carriage. He started up the hill at breakneck 
speed. I had on light patent leather shoes. For 
three hours we plodded on at a high pace. I 
panted and gasped. My collar wilted. I per- 
spired. It was a pace of four miles an hour. 

"At the end the Colonel was all in. So was 
I. But the President exclaimed, *Great, bully!' 
I said, 'This exercise ought to be made a test 
for promotion.' The Colonel thumped his hands 
together and shouted, *By George, Til do it!' 
And I have an idea that is what inspired his 
order that army officers go through severe phys- 
ical tests." 

CAUSE FOR ANGER 

Captain Lung was with him when the Colonel's 
carriage was run into by a trolley outside Pitts- 
field, Mass., September 3, 1902, and a secret 
service man in the carriage was killed. 

"The car was filled with people," said the 
Captain, "who were on their way to the country 
club to give the President a farewell cheer as 
he left the town. The President was thrown out 



80 GOOD STORIES 

and landed on his knees. I helped him to rise 
and gently squeezed his chest to see if any ribs 
were broken. He resented the action and asked 
to be left alone. 

"Then he walked over to the motorman who 
had run him down and told him that if the 
collision was an accident it was excusable, but 
that if it were due to carelessness it was 
damnable. That was the only time I ever heard 
him utter a profane word." 

KAISER'S CONCEIT 

When the American fleet went to Kiel the 
Kaiser visited the flagship Louisiana and saw the 
President's photograph hanging in a conspicuous 
place and, upon leaving, he grandly presented a 
photograph of himself and said that if he had 
any preference as to where it should be hung 
he would select the spot President Roosevelt's 
picture adorned. The substitution, it is hardly 
necessary to state, was not made. Colonel 
Roosevelt used to tell that story with a great 
deal of relish and laughed heartily at the idea 
of the Kaiser wanting to take his place. 

POLITICS MUST WAIT 

President Roosevelt always was a familiar 
figure at Harvard-Yale football games and at the 
boat races in New London. He especially was 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 81 

fond of football and watched the sport closely. 
Just how closely can be seen by the following 
incident : 

On December 4, 1905, the committee to notify 
President Roosevelt that the House was organ- 
ized and ready for business, including Represen- 
tatives McCleary of Minnesota, Littauer of New 
York, and Williams of Mississippi, called Sec- 
retary Loeb to ask when the President could 
see them. It then was approaching 3 o'clock. 

"The President cannot see you between 3 and 
6 o'clock," Mr. Loeb telephoned after a consulta- 
tion with Colonel Roosevelt. 

"Why not?" asked the committee. 

"He is busy," said Loeb, and hung up the 
telephone. 

The President was busy talking football with 
Walter Camp and Jack Owsley of Yale, Bill Reid 
and Dr. D. H. Nicholas of Harvard, Arthur T. 
Hillebrand and John B. Fine of Princeton. The 
previous football season had resulted in many 
more accidents than usual, and the President 
was of the opinion that for the good of the 
game the rules should be revised. It was for 
that purpose he had called Mr. Camp and his 
associates to Washington. 



SECONDARY CONSIDERATION 

Half a dozen Senators and Representatives 
were in the waiting room at the President's 



82 GOOD STORIES 

office one morning. None of them could get in 
to see the President, however. Finally a Senator 
said to Captain Loeffler: *'Go in and see what's 
holding us up.'* 

Loeffler came back and reported: "The Pres- 
ident is giving a reception to the Harvard base- 
ball team." 

*'Well," said another Senator, "tell him there 
are a lot of Senators and Representatives here." 
Loeffler went back and returned. 

"What did he say?" chorused the v/aiting 
statesmen. 

"He said he knew it," replied Loeffler, "but 
he told me that Senators and Representatives 
must be taught their places when a Harvard 
delegation is about," 



NOT WHERE HE AIMED 

Here is a story that Colonel Roosevelt told in 
the White House after Old Bill Sewall, his Maine 
guide, had called on him. They were on a moose 
hunt and were camped out in the woods. 

One morning while Roosevelt was trying to 
keep warm and Bill was chopping wood a moose 
walked into the clearing. The President grabbed 
his rifle and fired. 

The moose ran a short distance and then fell. 
Bill laid down his ax and dashed over to the 
moose. 

"You've got him!" he yelled after a short 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 83 

inspection. "How did it happen?*' 

"Why, I aimed for his breast," the PresfQent 
said. 

"First class!" shouted Bill. "First class! You 
done well. You hit him in the eye." 



THIS PLACE IS NOW PRESERVED 

The very house where the Colonel was bom 
used to figure in anecdotage. It was an old 
brick front, 28 East Twentieth street, New York. 
In 1903 a detective squad raiding gamblers' 
places went through it. All the gambling evi- 
dence they could find was a pile of ashes in a 
fireplace, and a quaint gathering of sportive and 
furtive gentry busily playing checkers. But on 
a mantelpiece they discovered a hand-painted 
card, with the truthful legend: "President 
Roosevelt Was Born in This House." 



PRESBYTERIAN ZEAL 

This story has been vouched for by members 
of the Colonel's family: On the east side of 
Madison Square, when he used to play there as 
a little shaver, stood a Presbyterian church, and 
the sexton one day noticed the little 'un timidly 
peeping in. But he wouldn't come in for a look 
around; nothing could induce him. "I know what 
you've got in there," he explained, And later he 



84 GOOD STORIES 

confided to his mother that what the sexton had 
in there which was terrible was "the zeal," prob- 
ably something like a dragon or an alligator. 
This reduced itself to his memory of Psalm Ixix, 
9: *Tor the zeal of thine house hath eaten me 
up." 



JIM COULDNT STAND IT 

The Colonel liked to draw his illustrations 
from familiar and homely scenes. "Every now 
and then," he once said, "I have to remind my- 
self that there are a lot of Jim Jimpsons in the 
world. I employ two men at Sagamore Hill. Jim 
has always been second man. On several occa- 
sions I tried to promote him to first place. But 
he could never hold the job. It was beyond his 
capacity. He was born at Oyster Bay and has 
never been to New York. Once he got as far as 
Mineola, but the magnificence of that metropolis 
overwhelmed him and he hurried back to Oyster 
Bay." 



THE PERSONAL APPEAL 

Colonel Roosevelt liked to pick out someone in 
his audience and talk straight to one person 
when making a speech in public. This often em- 
barrassed the person selected. Formerly he 
always began with, "Ladies and gentlemen, and 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 85 

you" filling in the name of the particular 

body he was addressing. Of late years, however, 
"My fellow citizens" was his favorite introduc- 
tion. 



ANOTHER ROUGH RIDER YARN 

Roosevelt's fondness for his Rough Riders was 
proverbial. Many stories are told of his custom 
of neglecting others for them. Thus Senator 
Bard of California took a constituent to see 
Roosevelt when he was President. The friend 
had served in the Rough Riders. 

"Mr. President," began Bard, "I want to pre- 
sent my friend" 

"Why, hello, Jim!" the President broke in. 
"How are you?" 

And for ten minutes the President and Jim 
talked while Bard stood neglected. As the two 
were leaving, Roosevelt said: "By the way, Jim, 
come up to dinner tonight and bring Bard with 
you." 



HE HAD A HEART 

Jacob A. Riis wrote of Colonel Roosevelt once: 
"His love for children, especially for those who 
have not so good a time as some others, is as 
instinctive as his championship of all that needs 
a lift. I doubt if he is aware of it himself. He 



86 GOOD STORIES 

does not recognize as real sympathy what he 
feels rather as a sense of duty. 

"Yet I have seen him, when school children 
crowded around the rear platform of the train 
from which he was making campaign speeches 
to shake hands, catch the eye of a poor little 
crippled girl in a patched frock, who was making 
frantic but hopeless efforts to reach him in the 
outskirts of the crowd, and, pushing aside all 
the rest, make a way for her, to the great 
amusement of the curled darlings in the front 



AND IT IS TRUE TODAY 

President Roosevelt's impatience of red tape 
was proverbial. The story is told of one com- 
mittee that had been meeting him daily for a 
week in Washington, always to adjourn without 
perceptible progress. When the committee left 
on this occasion one of them said they would do 
something "tomorrow." 

"Tomorrow!" the President exploded. "Gen- 
tlemen, if Noah had had to consult such a com- 
mittee as this about building the ark, it wouldn't 
have been built yet." 



A DEBT TO BE PROUD OF 

There is one New York man to whom the 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 87 

Colonel owed a .small financial debt — United 
States Marshal Thomas D. McCarthy. 

"Yes, the Colonel was my debtor to the extent 
of one penny," said the Marshal. "Here's how it 
came about: On March 3, 1909, just as Presi- 
dent Roosevelt was to retire in favor of President 
Taft, I was sent to Washington to present to him 
a handsome hunting knife, the gift of Justice, 
later Ambassador, James W. Gerard, with whose 
court I was associated at the time. 

" *Be sure to get a coin, a penny, from the 
President when you give him the knife,' the 
Justice told me. 'Remember the old superstition 
that a gift of that sort cuts friendship unless 
a small payment is made for it.' 

"When I gave Colonel Roosevelt the knife I 
asked him for the penny. He didn't have one in 
his pocket. Neither did his secretary, Mr. Loeb. 
Neither did Senator Chamberlain, who was pres- 
ent. So I volunteered: 'Here, Mr. President, 
I'll lend you a cent.' He took it and put it in 
his vest pocket. 

"After ten minutes of conversation, during 
which time he gave me an autographed photo- 
graph for myself and a book for my father, who 
always admired him, the President suddenly 
reached into his pocket, withdrew the coin and 
said: 'Mr. McCarthy, it gives me great pleasure 
to hand you, in return for Judge Gerard's gift, 
this one-cent coin.' Ever since then I have 
prized the photograph and the book Mr. Roose- 
velt gave me as one of the most cherished pos- 



88 GOOD STORIES 

sessions of my father. And I always have been 
proud of the fact that a President of the United 
States owed me a penny." 



TEDDY AS A TENDERFOOT 

George William Douglas, in his book, "The 
Many-Sided Roosevelt," tells the following story 
of his life as a young man in the West: 

"One evening after supper he was reading at 
a table in the public room of a frontier hotel, 
where he was passing the night. The room was 
office, dining room, barroom, and everything else. 
A man, half-drunk, came into the hotel with a 
swagger, marched up to the bar, and with a 
flourish of his arm, commanded everybody to 
drink. Everybody was willing to obey; that is, 
everybody but Mr. Roosevelt. He still sat at 
the table, busy with his book. 

" *Who's that fellow V the man asked, pointing 
in Roosevelt's direction. 

" 'Oh, he's a tenderfoot, just arrived,' someone 
said. 

" *Humph,' he grunted. Then he turned square 
around and called out: 'Say, Mr. Four-eyes, I 
asked this house to drink. Did you hear me?' 

"Mr. Roosevelt made no reply. The man swag- 
gered over to him, pulling out his pistol and 
firing as he crossed the room. 

" *I want you to understand that when I ask 
a man to drink with me, that man's got to drink,' 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 89 

he threatened, fondhng his still-smoking pistol. 

" *You must excuse me tonight. I do not care 
for anything to drink/ said Roosevelt. 

" That don't go here. You just order your 
drink or there'll be more trouble.' 

" *Very well, sir,' Roosevelt replied, rising 
slowly to his feet and waiting till he was firmly 
poised on them before completing his remark. *I 
do not care for anything, but if I must' 

"With the word *must' he let his fist fly, 
striking the bully a terrific blow on the jaw and 
knocking him on the floor. In an instant Roose- 
velt was astride of him, with his knees holding 
down the man's arms. After taking away all 
the weapons he could find, he let the man up. 

" *Now, I hope you understand, sir, that I do 
not care to drink with you,' said the young 
tenderfoot, who had hardened his muscle to some 
purpose before he went West." 



NOTHING LIKE PREPAREDNESS 

Colonel Roosevelt himself was authority for 
the story about the time when, riding the 
ranges alone, reports of hostile Indians about 
notwithstanding, he noticed three mounted 
braves converging in his direction. As they were 
where friendly Indians had no business to be, he 
*lfd off his pony, set the sights of his Winchester 
for long range and showed himself aiming care- 
fully, but did not pull the trigger. The trio 



90 GOOD STORIES 

talked it over and sheered off. Colonel Roosevelt 
said it was the nearest he ever had come to 
actual Indian fighting. 



THE GENTLE REBUKE 

Probably no man of his time had more pictures 
taken of him than Colonel Roosevelt. They were 
stacked up in every newspaper office. Many 
stories are told of his experiences with photog- 
raphers, and here is one: 

On his trip to South America, where he dis- 
covered the "River of Doubt," he was accom- 
panied by several motion picture photographers. 
One was a free lance who was a trifle sensitive 
about his standing on board. 

During the celebration of the Feast of Nep- 
tune, when the ship crossed the equator, there 
was a pillow fight on a rail over a tank of water 
The photographers lined up to get the picture of 
the struggle, with the Colonel in the background. 
One of the regular photographers slipped a cap 
over the free lance's camera. 

One of the contestants had just been knocked 
off the pole into the water, and Colonel Roosevelt, 
laughing and applauding, turned to the free 
lance, who was grinding away at his useless 
machine, and said: 

"Take off your cap, young man !" 

The free lance frowned at the Colonel, think- 
ing he was being joshed, and said: 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 91 

"I am an Austro-Hungarian subject and have 
never become an American citizen. I don't see 
why I should." 

The Colonel, continuing to smile, said: 

"I was merely going to say that if you will 
take the cap off the lens of your camera, we will 
have the bout fought over again so you can 
obtain a good picture." 

The free lance sheepishly took off the cap 
from the camera, and then bared his head to 
Colonel Roosevelt. 



STANDING BY A FRIEND 

The Roosevelt impulse to "speak right out in 
meeting" was indelibly impressed on the minds 
of a number of Denver citizens a few years ago. 
The innocent cause of the frank outburst was 
Judge Ben Lindsey of juvenile court fame, who 
was a friend of Colonel Roosevelt for years. 

The incident was staged at one of the side 
entrances of the Denver Auditorium, where 
Colonel Roosevelt was scheduled to deliver an 
address. The time was in early September, 1910. 
The late Mayor Speer headed the committee 
which had charge of the day's ceremonies. In- 
asmuch as Judge Lindsey and the "powers" con- 
trolling Denver at that time were very much at 
outs. Judge Lindsey was not invited to serve on 
the committee. 

Desiring to at least say "How-do" to his dis- 



92 GOOD STORIES 

tinguished friend, the judge stationed himself at 
the side entrance which the Colonel would use 
to reach the speaker's stand. As Colonel Roose- 
velt stepped from the motor car preparatory to 
entering the building he saw Judge Lindsey. 
"Hello there, Ben; where have you been keeping 
yourself? Come on in!" was the Roosevelt 
greeting. 

"I have not been invited," replied Judge 
Lindsey, shaking hands. At once fire showed in 
the Colonel's eyes and, turning to the committee, 
he said: 

"Gentlemen, haven't you made arrangements 
for Judge Lindsey to sit on the stage with us?" 

One of the party spoke up: "No, Mr. Roose- 
velt, we did not make any arrangements for the 
judge to be with us." 

"Well," snapped the Colonel, "he is going to 
be one of the party just the same. Come along, 
Ben!" 

Grabbing the astounded judge by the arm, 
Colonel Roosevelt piloted him to the stage and 
placed him in a front seat close to the speaker's 
stand. 

The committee gasped a few times, but had 
not a word to say. 



ON TOPICS OF THE DAY 

The general public saw Colonel Roosevelt 
chiefly as a first-class fighting man, stern, ener- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 93 

getic, dealing and taking heavy blows. To his 
friends, including journalists in all parts of the 
country, he was altogether a different personal- 
ity — "buoyant, exuberant, witty, full of boyish 
enthusiasm to the very end, and human to the 
last degree." 

A visitor from the Kansas City Star, for 
which the Colonel wrote a daily editorial, saw 
him at the Roosevelt Hospital in New York a 
fortnight before his death. He had been laid up 
for several weeks with rheumatism and was 
sitting in his dressing gown beside the bed. He 
listened with the greatest interest to the gossip 
that the visitor brought from Washington and 
commented on it with keen insight. 

The subject of international relations came up, 
and he discussed other nations and leading for- 
eign statesmen with the quaint humor that was 
characteristic of him. 

"In dealing with the Japanese," he said, "we 
ought to do absolutely the reverse of what 
Hearst is doing. He is constantly denouncing 
and attacking them. We ought to treat the 
Japanese with the utmost politeness and con- 
sideration. When they join with us in patrolling 
the Mediterranean or in a Red Cross drive, we 
ought to give them the most generous recogni- 
tion. And then we ought to send the fleet 
around once in a while so they can look at it." 

Then he added this general principle of diplo- 
macy: "In dealing with other nations we ought 
always to get on beautifully unless we are pre- 



94 GOOD STORIES 

pared to protest about something and go to the 
mat over it. We should never take the middle 
course in wrangling over matters that we don't 
intend to see through. That simply produces 
irritation and gets nov^here." 

Of course this was simply another way of 
putting his famous maxim: "Speak softly and 
carry a big stick." 



NOT THE ROOSEVELT WAY 

A leading Republican Senator had asked the 
Kansas City man to deliver a message to the 
Colonel. 

"Tell him for me," the Senator said, "that I 
think he is getting in bad with the people by 
talking so favorably about England. His saying 
that we ought to have a treaty for universal 
arbitration with England, and that we don't 
need a navy as big as England's — that sort of 
thing doesn't sit well." 

The message was duly delivered with the com- 
ment that the visitor didn't agree with it. 
"Nor do I," exclaimed the Colonel. "I alienated 
the entire German vote in 1916 because I thought 
it was necessary to speak out against Germany 
in the war. Does anybody suppose I am going 
to keep from saying what I think ought to be 
said about England now, in order not to alienate 
the anti-English vote? I don't do business that 
way." 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 95 

A SMILE AT WILSON 

The talk drifted to President Wilson's latest 
address to Congress and his insistence on ratify- 
ing the Colombian treaty. 

"It seems to me," he said, "that I merely 
applied the famous principle of *self-determina- 
tion for small peoples' to the state of Pananaa." 

NO CHANGE OF HEART 

The League of Nations was mentioned, and 
the Colonel remarked that of course he was as 
anxious as anybody possibly could be to make 
the peace settlement as lasting as possible. "But 
I have had enough experience in affairs to know 
the danger of attempting to bind the American 
nation in a permanent alliance with the conti- 
nent,'* he added. "A friend of mine has been up 
arguing with me about it. He insisted that the 
people of Europe had had a change of heart on 
account of the war. *Yes,' I said, 'about as much 
as the people of New York would have if they 
all got togethex in a mass meeting and adopted 
resolutions that there should be no more vice in 
New York City.' " 

PHILADELPHIA FRIENDS 

Colonel Roosevelt had a host of friends in 
Philadelphia. His last words there were spoken 



96 GOOD STORIES 

at the Broad Street Station on the morning of 
January 10, 1917: 

"IVe had a bully time." 

He used the same words in describing his 
whole life. They might serve for his epitaph. 

In 1902 the Colonel spoke at the dedication of 
the new Central High School Building, Phila- 
delphia. 

He gave the boys the famous advice which he 
said he had heard on the football field: "Don't 
flinch, don't foul, and hit the line hard." 

A Philadelphia friend wrote him only a few 
days before his death, reminding him of an occa- 
sion on which he had uttered the same doctrine 
at Harvard when he talked to a small audience 
of undergraduates on "Playing for Harvard." 
Those were the days when he was Police Com- 
missioner in New York. 

Colonel Roosevelt's answer was dated January 
1, 1919. In it he paid a warm tribute to "Dave" 
Goodrich, a leading athlete, who was his right- 
hand man in Cuba. 



CHIPS OF THE OLD BLOCK 

He said at Harvard, with his teeth set, as he 
restlessly paced the platform: 

"If I had a son who refused to play polo for 
fear of breaking his neck — I'd disinherit him." 

When the time came none of his sons was 
found wanting. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 97 

NO TIME LEFT IDLE 

Mr. Roosevelt's passion for study and his pur- 
pose always to improve the time was displayed 
by his plan made soon after becoming Vice- 
President and following his realization that he 
would have much leisure, as the duties of the 
office were not onerous. He asked Justice White 
of the Supreme Court whether it would be dig- 
nified and becoming were he to attend a course 
of law at one of the Washington universities, to 
prepare himself for the bar. The Justice 
thought it would not be and suggested that he 
should give the Vice-President some law books 
for study and once a week "quiz" him. This 
plan was approved by Mr. Roosevelt, but the 
assassination of President McKinley interrupted 
its execution. 



EXPENSIVE LUXURIES 

Just before the expiration of his last term Mr. 
Roosevelt was discussing the advisability of a 
pension for ex-Presidents. He himself didn't 
need one, he said, because he would be able to 
earn his living by writing. But Mr. Cleveland 
had been in extremely straitened circumstances 
until Mr. Ryan made him a trustee of the 
Equitable Life at $25,000 a year. 

"A President who entertains much," he said, 
"can't save much money on ?50,000 a year. The 



98 GOOD STORIES 

last time I entertained a distinguished foreign 
visitor with a state dinner I said to Mrs. Koose- 
velt: There goes another child's schooling for 
a year/" 

QUALIFICATIONS FOR STATESMANSHIP 

Mr. Roosevelt's sense of humor is illustrated 
in remarks he made in 1896 when speaking of 
the Southern Populists. He said: 

^'Refinement and comfort they are apt to con- 
sider quite as objectionable as immorality. That 
a man should change his clothes in the evening, 
that he should dine at any other hour than noon, 
impress these good people as being symptoms of 
depravity instead of merely trivial. A taste for 
learning and cultivated friends, and a tendency 
to bathe frequently, cause them the deepest sus- 
picion. Senator Tillman's brother has been fre- 
quently elected to Congress upon the issue that 
he never wore either an overcoat or an under- 
shirt." 



ILLUSTRATING HIS POSITION 

A few days before the inauguration of Mr. 
Taft a party of insurgent Congressmen called 
at the White House to get help from the Presi- 
dent in dealing with Speaker Cannon. Already 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 99 

the disposition of the former Secretary of War 
to ignore the man who made him President was 
noticeable. 

"I'd like to help you with the new Presi- 
dent," said Mr. Roosevelt, "but you remember 
the skipper of the Gloucester fisheiTnan who 
said to his mate, *A11 I want out of you, Mr. 
Jones, is ci-vility — and damn little of that.'" 



PRINCIPLE BEFORE PROFIT 

On leaving the White House President Roose- 
velt declined an offer of the presidency of a 
large corporation at a salary of $100,000 a 
year. He did this because he had determined 
to make no commercial use of his name. He 
accepted the office of associate editor of The 
Outlook at a salary of $12,000, because he be- 
lieved it offered him the means to reach the 
people. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE END 

Bishop Biermans, Vicar Apostolic of the 
Upper Nile, said in June of 1915, just after 
visiting Colonel Roosevelt at Oyster Bay: 

"He told me he would never again be the 
same man — that his trip to South Africa was 
too much for him." 



100 GOOD STORIES 

NO CH.4NCE TO STEAL 

On June 10, 191", the C::onel went to speak 
for a iiieir.'jr^l meeting of the railway brother- 
hoods at the Metropolitan Opera House, Phila- 
delphia. 

He was as chock-a-block with vital electricity 
as Billy Sunday at the top of his form, said one 
of his hearers. 

'^"nen he went to the Bellevue-Stratford for 
Itmch, the elevator boy in his agitation passed 
the floor of the Blue Room. 

*T>on't be hard on him!" exclaimed :he 
ColoneL "He probably thinks there is some- 
thing- of value in the Blue Room that I might 
carry off with me, but he might know I am 
surrounded by detectives." 

THE "STAR" EDITOR'S UBRARY 

A few years ago the Colonel was visirlng at 
the home of W. R. Nelson in Kansas City. 
Looking about the library, he said to a member 
of the family: ''Where does your father keep 
his Greek dramatists? You can always tell a 
man of real literary instincts by his Greek 
dramatists." Happily, the Greek dramatists 
were in a fitting place on the book shelves. 

NO "JACKET" ON HIS BOOKS 

The paper cover that publishers put on books 
IS alwavs a hctlv disT:'Ut^d mauer with readers. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 101 

Those who detest it detest it. A visitor from 
the West who saw the Colonel not long before 
his death carried him a book on international 
affairs. The Colonel expressed his pleasure 
while removing the wrapper, crumpling it into 
a wad and throwing it on the floor. 



HAD SOME OF THE "VICES" 

At a state dinner when he was President a 
woman guest noticed v/ith apparent disapproval 
that he refused a cigar. 

''Why, Mr. President," she remonstrated. 
"Don't you smoke?" 

"No, madam," he replied, "but I like to go 
to prize fights. Won't that do?" 



SQUARE ON LABOR 

John Mitchell, the great leader of the mine 
workers, was always a w^elcome visitor at the 
White House when Roosevelt was President. 
Organized labor was recognized by Roosevelt as 
a necessity. He believed in the enforcement of 
all labor laws and in the right of the workers 
he said: 'T am for a protective tariff that gets 
past the mill offices dov/n into the pockets of 
to organize. In relation to the protective tariff 
the workingmen." 



102 GOOD STORIES 

ALL COMPANY WAS WELCOME 

A friend who visited the Colonel at the hos- 
pital heard of the numerous political visitors who 
were calling on him, including standpatters as 
well as progressives. 

**My, my, Colonel," said the visitor, "what 
company you have been keeping." 

"Well," replied the Colonel with a grin, "like 
the late Colonel Breckinridge of Kentucky, *I am 
not a narrow man.' " 

LET 'EM FIGHT IT OUT 

As between two of his political antagonists 
who had fallen out Colonel Roosevelt remarked: 
"My position is one of malevolent neutrality." 

KEEPING AT IT WINS 

Colonel Roosevelt always disclaimed being a 
genius. He said with regard to the successful 
man: "The average man who is successful — 
the average statesman, the average public serv- 
ant, the average soldier, who wins what we call 
great success — is not a genius. He is a man 
who has merely the ordinary qualities, who has 
developed those ordinary qualities to a more 
than ordinary degree." 

A ROOSEVELT CHARACTERISTIC 

Many persons thought of Colonel Roosevelt as 
constantly figuring on politics, and how policies 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 103 

would affect him politically. The exact opposite 
was true. Men most intimately associated with 
him never heard him discuss his own political 
fortunes. The only thing he asked about a 
policy was: *Ts it right?" 

AND HE HAD CALLED PENROSE NAMES 

One day a strong Roosevelt Progressive met 
Senator Penrose, king of the old standpat crowd. 

"What about the candidate, Senator?" he 
asked. 

"Well, how about the Colonel?" answered 
Penrose. 

"Oh, Fm for him, all right. But I didn't sup- 
pose you would be." 

"I'm for him. He's about the squarest man 
I ever ran up against." 

WHAT MADE HIM MAD 

"Do you know the thing that makes me mad- 
der than almost anything else?" the Colonel once 
said to W. R. Nelson. "That is to see a husky 
man going along with his wife, letting her 
carry the baby. I know that sort of a fellow 
is no good." 

NOT ABOVE MAKING MISTAKES 

A characteristic story is that of a friend who 
took him to task for some mistake he had made 



104 GOOD STORIES 

in one of his appointments. The former Presi- 
dent in reply to the criticism said: "My dear 
sir, where you know of one mistake I have 
made, I know of ten." 



WELCOMED CRITICISM 

In his capacity as contributor to the Kansas 
City Star the men on that paper say the Colonel 
was the most considerate of men to work with. 
He had nothing of the small man's pride in 
what he wrote. 

*'If you think any of my stuff is rotten," he 
said, "don't hesitate to throw it away. I always 
like criticism. Secretary Root was invaluable 
in my Cabinet because he was always ready to 
oppose my ideas. We used to go round and 
round, and when he didn't convince me I was 
wrong he frequently convinced me that I would 
have to modify my position. John Hay disagreed 
with me. But he was too kind-hearted to say so. 
So he didn't help me so much.'* 

In his writings he was rarely humorous or 
ironical. In conversation he was habitually so. 



HAVING A BULLY TIME 

Former Congressman Charles G. Washburn of 
Worcester, Mass., after remarking that Roosevelt 
had a lively sense of humor in his college days 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 105 

at Harvard, says in his book: "I remember well 
with what glee he told us that he had gone to 
Boston to get a basket of live lobsters for labora- 
tory purposes, and on the way back they escaped, 
much to the consternation of the women in the 
horse car." 



VERY LIKE A BOY 

Colonel Roosevelt liked new martial or sporting 
implements — things he could play with — as 
keenly as any boy. In 1906 the Mikado sent 
the President as a token of esteem a complete 
suit of samurai armor from the thirteenth cen- 
tury. The President excused himself to an in- 
formal caller for a moment. Off went his frock 
coat and on went the armor. Presto! and he 
made a costume parade of one up and down the 
corridors of the White House. 



PUNCH HAS ITS JOKE 

While the Colonel and his son Kermit were 
shooting in Africa, London Punch, with a genial 
inspiration, published a cartoon of the Roose- 
velts in the Egyptian desert carefully stalking 
the Sphinx. The Colonel was saying, **Steady, 
Kermit; we must have one of these!" When 
he saw it he was so pleased with it that he 
wrote to London and asked to have the original, 
which was sent to him. 



106 GOOD STORIES 

TOOK NO CHANCES 

Speaking of the Rough Riders, Colonel Roose- 
velt said: "It was necessary to get that regi- 
ment into action, otherwise it would have been 
laughed at. We came near being left behind, 
and I admit that I pulled every wire in sight to 
get that regiment to Cuba, and we got there. 
If we had not I should never have been 
President." 

DOMESTIC FELICITY 

A cowboy who had been with him in the 
Rough Riders, sure of his sympathy, wrote him 
from a jail in Arizona: 

"Dear Colonel: — I am in trouble. I shot a 
lady in the eye, but I did not intend to hit the 
lady. I was shooting at my wife." 

KNEW HIS MAN 

Theodore Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary of 
the Navy, was instrumental in the selection of 
Dewey to take charge of the Pacific squadron 
during the Spanish-American war. San Fran- 
cisco and a few other cities objected. They did 
not know Dewey. 

A delegation was sent to Washington to kick 
against the appointment. The delegation was 
finally turned over to Roosevelt. He listened 
patiently to their objections, and said: 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 107 

"Gentlemen, I cannot agree with you. We 
have looked up his record. We have looked him 
straight in the eyes. He is a fighter. We'll 
not change now. Pleased to have met you. 
Good day, gentlemen." 



HONORABLE AMBITION 

A few days after President McKinley had been 
shot, when physicians had given the opinion 
that he would recover, no one felt more joyful 
than Vice-President Roosevelt. 

"To become President through the assassin's 
bullet means nothing to me," he said at the 
home of Ansley Wilcox in Buffalo. "Aside from 
the horror of having President McKinley die, 
there is an additional horror in becoming his 
successor in that way. The thing that appeals 
to me is to be elected President. That is the 
way I want the honor to come if I am ever to 
receive it." 



LOCAL LITERARY OPINION 

Roosevelt was in Idaho one day when he saw 
a copy of his book, "The Winning of the West," 
on a newsstand. In talking to the proprietor he 
casually asked, pointing to the book: 

"Who is this man Roosevelt?" 

"Oh, he is a ranch driver up in the cattle 
country," the man replied. 



108 GOOD STORIES 

"What do you think of his book?" 
"Well, Fve always thought I'd like to meet 
the author and tell him if he'd stuck to running 
ranches and not tried to write books, he'd cut 
a heap bigger figger at his trade." 



HE COULD MAKE FOLKS LAUGH 

"Theodore Roosevelt is a humorist," wrote 
Homer Davenport in the Philadelphia Public 
Ledger in 1910. "In the multitude of his strenu- 
ousness this, the most human of his accomplish- 
ments, has apparently been overlooked. There 
is a similarity between his humor and Mark 
Twain's. If Colonel Roosevelt were on the 
vaudeville stage he would be a competitor of 
Harry Lauder. At Denver, at the stock grow- 
ers' banquet during his recent Western trip. 
Colonel Roosevelt was at his best. He made 
three speeches that day and was eating his sixth 
meal, yet he was in the best of fettle. You 
couldn't pick a hallful that could sit with faces 
straight through "his story of the blue roan cow. 
He can make a joke as fascinating as he can 
the story of a sunset on the plains of Egypt." 



THE PRESIDENT ENJOYED THIS 

Professor Thayer's "Life of John Hay" con- 
tains a good deal of delightful Rooseveltiana. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 109 

Here is a letter that Mr. Hay, as Secretary of 
State, addressed to President Roosevelt on 
November 12, 1901: 

"Count Quadt [of the German Embassy] has 
been hovering around the State Department in 
ever narrowing circles for three days, and at 
last swooped upon me this afternoon, saying that 
the Foreign Office, and even the palace, Unter 
den Linden, was in a state of intense anxiety to 
know how you received his Majesty's Chinese 
medal, conferred only upon the greatest 
sovereigns. 

"As I had not been authorized by you to 
express your emotions I had to sail by dead 
reckoning, and, considering the vast intrinsic 
value of the souvenir — I should say at least 30 
cents — and its wonderful artistic merit, repre- 
senting the German eagle eviscerating the Black 
Dragon, and its historical accuracy, which gives 
the world to understand that Germany was It 
and the rest of the universe nowhere, I took the 
responsibility of saying to Count Quadt that the 
President could not have received the medal with 
anything but emotions of pleasure commensurate 
with the high appreciation he entertains for the 
Emperor's majesty, and that a formal acknowl- 
edgment would be made in due course. 

"He asked me if he was at liberty to say 
something like this to his government, and I 
said he was at liberty to say whatever the spirit 
moved him to utter." 



no GOOD STORIES 

GOT A CALLING DOWN "^ 

Here are other interesting passages from John 
Hay's diary: 

"Nineteen hundred and four — January 17. — The 
President came in for an hour and talked very 
amusingly on many matters. Among others he 
spoke of a letter received from an old lady in 
Canada denouncing him for having drunk a 
toast to Helen (Hay) at her wedding two years 
ago. The good soul had waited two years, 
hoping that the pulpit or the press would take 
up this enormity. Think/ she said, *of the 
effect on your friends, on your children, on your 
own immortal soul, of such a thoughtless act !' " 

THE QUICK RETORT 

"March 18. — At the Cabinet meeting today the 
President said someone had written asking if he 
wanted to annex any more islands. He answered : 
'About as much as a gorged anaconda wants to 
swallow a porcupine wrong end to.' He was 
berating someone, when it was observed that the 
man was doubtless conscientious. *Well,' he 
burst out, *if a man has a conscience which leads 
him to do things like that he should take it out 
and look at it — for it is unhealthy.' " 

STRENUOUS WORK 

"April 26. — At the Cabinet meeting this 
morning the President talked of his Japanese 



f # 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 111 



wrestler, who is giving him lessons in jiu-jitsu. 
He says the muscles of the Jap's throat are so 
powerfully developed by training that it is im- 
possible for any ordinary man to strangle him. 
If the President succeeds once in a while in 
getting the better of him he says, *Good! 
Lovely!'" 



HE UNDERSTOOD EMERSON 

"May 8. — The President was reading 'Emer- 
son's Days,' and came to the wonderful closing 
line, *I, too late, under her solemn fillet saw the 
scorn.' I said, *I fancy you do not know what 
that means.' *0h, do I not? Perhaps the great- 
est men do not, but I in my soul know I am but 
the average man, and that only marvelous good 
fortune has brought me where I am.' " 



REAL CAUSE FOR PRIDE 

"October 30. — The President came in for an 
hour. We talked a while about the campaign 
(1904) and at last he said, It seems a cheap 
sort of thing to say, and I would not say it to 
other people, but laying aside my own personal 
interests and hopes — for of course I desire in- 
tensely to succeed — I have the greatest pride 
that in this fight we are not only making it 
on clearly avowed principles, but we have the 



112 GOOD STORIES 

principles and the record to avow. How can I 
help being a httle proud when I contrast the 
men and the considerations by which I am atr 
tacked and those by which I am defended?'" 



BRITISH OPINION 

And Hay tells how John Morley, the British 
statesman, had said, "The two things in America 
which strike me as most extraordinary are 
Niagara Falls and President Roosevelt." 

"He is a superman if ever there was one," 
said Conan Doyle at the time of his last visit 
to the United States. 



HIS INTIMATE SIDE 

While Colonel Roosevelt was President he 
talked with the greatest freedom to the news- 
paper correspondents, always relying on their 
discretion to put what he said in diplomatic 
language. It was in these conversations that 
some of his famous epithets were first used. 

"Senator So-and-So," he remarked, "seems to 
have sweetbreads for brains." 

Of a somewhat effeminate public man he said: 
"Mollycoddle is too harsh a term to apply to 
Freddie." 

"Yes, So-and-So is a loyal friend," he re- 
marked on another occasion; "there is always 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 113 

in the back of his head the feeling that if we 
were cast away on a desert island I would kill 
and eat him." 



PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCES 

In the last few weeks before his death, the 
question of the Presidential nominee for 1920 
was much in the minds of Republican Congres- 
sional leaders in Washington. The feeling was 
general that Colonel Roosevelt had been the man 
who had been right on preparedness and on the 
Great War long in advance of anybody else ; that 
he had blazed the way and made the issues, and 
that he had earned the party leadership. The 
Colonel himself was absolutely indifferent. He 
told his friends he would not turn his hand over 
for the nomination. 

"So far as I am concerned," he said, "my 
position is exactly what it was in 1916. I am not 
at all concerned whether the party nominates 
me or not. What I am concerned in is that it 
nominates a man and adopts principles that I 
can support." 



ROOSEVELT AND THE WORLD WAR 

On America entering the war, he was eager to 
take a hand in the fight which he had so long 
urged upon the country, and he offered to raise 



114 GOOD STORIES 

four divisions for the front. The army officers 
coldly opposing all volunteering and the Admin- 
istration having adopted a rule against placing 
in posts of command any but professionally 
trained soldiers, he appealed to the President and 
Congress. The latter responded by authorizing 
the creation of a special organization for him, 
but the President sustained the objections of his 
military advisers. The disappointed applicant 
was obliged to content himself with retorting 
upon the President : "I am the only one he has 
kept out of the war. This war for me is an 
exclusive war. I have been blackballed by the 
Committee on National Efficiency, but I have 
three sons over there." Then, turning to Major- 
General Barry, the Commander of the Central 
Department, he said: "General, I have been 
Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of 
the United States for nearly eight years. I gave 
you your commission as a Major-General. I am 
perfectly willing to serve under you, or under 
any other General the War Department may 
select. All I ask is that I may have the military 
rank I had in the Spanish-American war, that of 
a Brigadier-General." 

But it was not to be. There were already 
enrolled, as I now remember, nearly fifty thou- 
sand volunteers most anxious to serve under him. 
His great heart, as those who knew him inti- 
mately can testify, was sorely disappointed be- 
cause he was not allowed to serve as he desired. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 115 

HIS SONS IN THE GREAT WAR 

Word came to him that his two eldest sons, 
who had obtained commissions at the Platts- 
burgh training camp, had thrown up their com- 
missions to enlist in the expeditionary force 
under Pershing. 

"I wouldn't have it otherwise for the world," 
he said. *'And yet I can't bring myself to think 
of it. I have lived my life. My work is prob- 
ably done. It wouldn't make the slightest dif- 
ference if I were killed. But it's different with 
boys with their lives before them. Of course I 
know in reason that if all my boys go over early 
in the war, they won't all come back. We can't 
talk about it yet at home." 

A few weeks later he remarked to a friend 
that for the first time in his life he couldn't 
sleep. He had always been able to throw off 
any worries while he was President. "But now," 
he said, "I wake up in the middle of the night 
wondering if the boys are all right, and thinking 
how I could tell their mother if anything 
happened." 

Then came Quentin's death in France. A 
friend saw the Colonel at the Harvard Club a 
few minutes after the news had come. 

"I know what you want to say," the Colonel 
said. "I know what is in your heart. But we 
mustn't think about that. The only thing to 
think of now is how to win the war." 

He found no small consolation for his own en- 



116 GOOD STORIES 

forced absence from the field in the military 
service of his four sons. He was immensely 
proud of the rank and decorations they won by 
their gallantry in France and of the honorable 
wounds incurred by 'two of them — Theodore and 
Archie. At the supreme sacrifice of his youngest 
son, Quentin, who fell battling in the air, he 
turned a brave front to the public and gave no 
outward sign of the cruel hurt that the blow 
must have caused the heart of a father so fond. 



THE GREAT ADVENTURE 

Ever since his return from the South Amer- 
ican adventure he had been less and less a well 
man. Although he fought ever so valiantly 
the malady which he brought back from the 
tropics, he could not shake it off. Impatiently 
as he resisted the limitations it set to his activ- 
ities, he was compelled with increasing frequency 
to yield to its remorseless progress and accept 
from time to time a period of invalidism at home 
or in a hospital. 

On each occasion he broke his truce with the 
physicians at the first chance and returned to 
the firing line. "Only those who are fit to live 
do not fear to die," he wrote in the shadow of 
the loss of his baby boy. "Both life and death 
are parts of the same great adventure." 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 117 

"IN FOR A BIT OF SLEEP" 

On the last night at Oyster Bay, after he bid 
his family good-night, Mrs. Roosevelt had been 
alone with him, and his old colored servant had 
been with him at 11:15 when he said: "Jim, 
will you turn out the light? I am in for a bit 
of sleep," And he never woke up. 



ROOSEVELT'S FAMOUS EPIGRAMS 

Theodore Roosevelt was a great maker of 
epigrams. The short and pithy phrases of his 
coinage now are part of the language of the 
country. It will be long before anyone who sees 
or hears the words **Bully!" and "Dee-lighted!" 
or the phrase "the strenuous life," will not think 
at once of Colonel Roosevelt. 

Some of the striking expressions of Colonel 
Roosevelt's making, or of such pointed use by 
him that, although he did not originate them, 
they always v/ill be associated with him instead 
of the author, follow: 

"Speak softly, but carry a Big Stick." This 
was his early definition of his political creed. 
And for years thereafter no cartoon of the 
Colonel was considered complete unless it con- 
tained the artist's conception of the Big Stick. 

"My hat is in the ring," was the way he 
announced he was a candidate for President. 

"My spear knov/s no brother," was a quotation 



118 GOOD STORIES 

that he used so effectively that it generally is 
associated with him. 

"Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead," was the 
Roosevelt answer when the Moorish bandit cap- 
tured and held for ransom Perdicaris, an Amer- 
ican citizen. 

"I have teeth and I can use them." So said 
Roosevelt when he was arguing with General 
Miles over the case of Rear Admiral Schley. 

"The short and ugly word" became a popular 
phrase throughout the country just as soon as 
Roosevelt used it in his verbal brush with the 
late E. H. Harriman. 

"Malefactors of great wealth" was a phrase 
made famous by Roosevelt. 

"Damn the law! Build the canal!" That is 
what Roosevelt is reported to have said when his 
advisers started to tell him the legal obstacles in 
the way of linking the Atlantic and the Pacific 
at Panama. 

"I am for the square deal" was one of the 
expressions in an early speech that gave the 
country a popular catchword. 

"The police board does not make nor repeal 
laws. It enforces them." So said Roosevelt when 
he was Police Commissioner of New York City. 
And those were widely quoted words at the time. 

"We stand at Armageddon and we battle "for 
the Lord." When Roosevelt used that phrase to 
describe the political fight he and his followers 
made in the so-called Bull Moose campaign there 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 119 

was great business of looking up Armageddon, 
which was found in the Bible. 

**I feel like a Bull Moose," was an expression 
that gave that name to the Progressive wing of 
the Republican party. 

"Better faithful than famous," was the aphor- 
ism he evolved for himself when he entered 
politics. 

**I took the Canal Zone and let Congress 
debate," was another widely quoted sentence. 

"Never strike soft. If you must hit a man, 
put him to sleep." That was a sentiment fre- 
quently expressed by Roosevelt in his latter-day 
speeches. 

"If you ever print anything without my per- 
mission, I shall deny it," he said when newly 
inaugurated as Governor to newspaper reporters. 
And they remembered it. 

"Weasel words," was the phrase he applied to 
words of President Wilson. 

"Mollycoddles!" "Ananias!" "Traitor!" "Pus- 
syfooter!" "Cravens and weaklings!" "Muck- 
rakers!" were among the superlatives that 
Colonel Roosevelt put with verbs and names in 
public attacks on those with whom he was 
displeased. 

"I do not number party loyalty among my 
commandments." This was one of his most 
famous expressions, made when he declared war 
on political bosses. 

"Someone asked me why I did not get an 
agreement with Colombia," he said on another 



120 GOOD STORIES 

occasion. "They might just as well ask me why 
I do not nail cranberry jelly to the wall." 



A FAVORITE POEM 

This poem by Hamlin Garland was one of 
Colonel Roosevelt's favorites: 

wild woods and rivers and untrod sweeps of 

sod, 

1 exult that I know you, 

I have felt you and worshipped you. 

I cannot be robbed of the memory 

Of horse and plain. 

Of bird and flower, 

Nor the song of the illimitable West Wind. 

ROOSEVELT AS A BOY 

In Roosevelt's boyhood home, under the dis- 
cipline of his father, there was plenty of time 
for play, but none for idleness. If he was not 
strong, he was at least all boy, if we are to 
accept the description of one of his earlier inti- 
mates, the Long Island stage driver on whose 
front seat "Ted" frequently rode. 

"He was a reg'lar boy. He was alius outdoors 
climbin' trees and goin' bird nestin'. I remem- 
ber him partic'lar like because he had queer 
livin' things in his pockets." 

The child was indeed father to the man, and 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 121 

many of the tastes acquired in boyhood re- 
mained with him to the end, in a highly devel- 
oped and specialized form. 

Weakness so often interrupted the studies of 
the young Theodore that he took no pleasure in 
the competition of the schoolroom, although the 
records of the public school, which he attended 
for a time, give him 97 in geography, 96 in 
history, and 98 in rhetoric. His 86 in spelling 
was pretty good for a spelling reformer. It is 
remembered by his teachers that he was strong 
for composition and declamation, and that he 
had uncommon skill in map-making. His school- 
ing, however, was necessarily irregular, and he 
was prepared for college by a private instructor. 



HIS EARLY DEMOCRACY 

When Theodore was about ten years old his 
parents took a house overlooking the Hudson 
River in Dobbs Ferry for a summer. The prop- 
erty is known as the Paton place, and its asso- 
ciation with the Roosevelts has been a source of 
pride to the older people of the pretty village 
opposite the Palisades. 

Theodore is remembered by Dobbs Ferry men 
who were boys with him as small of stature for 
his years and inclined to be dehcate. They re- 
member also that the force of character, courage 
and democracy that later became dominant char- 
acteristics were noticeable in his dealings with 



122 GOOD STORIES 

his companions. Unlike the other youths of 
prominent families that lived on the big estates 
along Broadway, from the first days of his 
family arrival he took part with energy in the 
boyish enterprises of those among whom he 
found himself. He was usually to be found with 
a crowd of boys on expeditions to the Saw Mill 
River to swim and fish, and on these hikes, 
though many were bigger and stronger than he, 
none outdid him in endurance. 

Roosevelt's particular pal among the boys was 
John MacNichol, and the friendship of the two 
lasted until the day of the Colonel's death, when 
MacNichol told how he came to be the friend of 
Roosevelt's Dobbs Ferry days. 

Roosevelt, assertive in what he believed to be 
right, quarreled with two other boys of the 
"gang." Both of the other boys were bigger 
than Roosevelt, but he had raised his arms and 
was awaiting the onrush of the two when Mac- 
Nichol arrived. MacNichol, who was strong for 
his age, took Roosevelt's part and his two foes 
called off the impending fight. 

In later years MacNichol became the village 
blacksmith. While he was hammering at his 
anvil his old friend was mounting to the great 
position he attained. Roosevelt did not forget 
his old friend, and on the not infrequent occa- 
sions when he passed through Dobbs Ferry after 
automobiles made Broadway along the Hudson a 
popular highway, he always stopped at Mac- 
Nichol's shop for a chat. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 123 

When the former President died, MacNichol 
showed a memento which he cherishes most 
highly. It is a letter on White House stationery 
from President Roosevelt, thanking him for a 
horseshoe which the blacksmith had fashioned 
with particular care. 



NOT A BRONCHO BUSTER 

When Mr. Roosevelt went into the cattle busi- 
ness he started with five hundred steers, and we 
are told: **He worked for a part of a season as 
a cowboy. He had his own 'string' of horses 
and they were as ugly and ill-tempered as the 
majority of cow-horses. He was not a broncho- 
breaker, as he has been pictured to be, and he 
took no unnecessary chances in mounting or 
endeavoring to tame an especially ugly horse. 
But he did not shrink from riding his own 
horses when they cut up the customary capers 
of mustangs, and although he was sometimes 
thrown and on one or two occasions pretty badly 
bruised and hurt, he stuck to his mounts until 
he had mastered them." 

One of the early and useful friends of Mr. 
Roosevelt in the Wild West was the late Colonel 
William F. Cody, the famous Buffalo Bill, and 
many a wild ride they had. Their friendship 
lasted to the day of Cody's death. 

In his life on the ranch, Mr. Roosevelt realized 
all the benefits he had anticipated, and it ap- 



124 GOOD STORIES 

pealed to him because "the charm of ranch life 
comes in its freedom, and the vigorous open-air 
existence it forces a man to lead." 

On his own ranch he experienced the very 
hardest part of the work. On one occasion he 
was for thirty-six hours in the saddle, dismount- 
ing only to change horses or to eat. 



STRENUOUS TIMES 

At one time he was helping to bring a thou- 
sand head of young cattle down to his lower 
range. At night he and a cowboy stood guard. 
The cattle had been without water that day, and 
in their thirst they tried to break away. In the 
darkness Mr. Roosevelt could dimly see the 
shadowy outlines of the frantic herd. With whip 
and spurs he circled around the herd, turning 
back the beasts at one point just in time to 
wheel and keep them in at another. After an 
hour of violent exertion, by which time he was 
dripping with sweat, he and his companion 
finally quieted the herd. 

On still another occasion he was out on the 
plains when a regular blizzard came. The cattle 
began to drift before the storm. They were^ 
frightened and maddened by the quick, sharp 
flashes of lightning and the stinging rain. The 
men darted to and fro before them and beside 
them, heedless of danger, checking them at each 
point where they threatened to break through. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 125 

The thunder was terrific. Peal followed peal. 
Each flash of lightning showed a dense array of 
tossing horns and staring eyes. At last, how- 
ever, when the storm was raging in fury, and 
when it seemed impossible to hold the herd to- 
gether any longer, the corrals were reached, and 
by desperate efforts Mr. Roosevelt and his com- 
panions managed to turn the herds into the 
barns. It was such work as this that brought 
the future President self-reliance and hardihood 
and made him in later life a firm advocate of 
horsemanship. 



THE WRESTLING GOVERNOR 

When Mr. Roosevelt entered upon his public 
career heavy burdens were laid upon him, and 
to keep in condition to meet the hard physical 
and mental strain, he again turned to boxing and 
wrestling for exercise. When Governor of New 
York the champion middleweight wrestler of 
America came several evenings a week to wrestle 
v/ith him. The news of the purchase of a 
wrestling mat for the Governor's mansion at 
Albany created consternation on the part of the 
State Comptroller, but was greeted with great 
enthusiasm by the red-blooded men to whom tHe 
Governor had become an idol. Many of these 
would have given all they possessed to have been 
able to stand at the edge of the mat and cheer 
their champion in his strenuous amusement. To 



126 GOOD STORIES 

the middleweight champion the job was a hard 
one. Not because he experienced any difficulty 
in downing the Governor, but because he was so 
awed by the Governor's position and responsibil- 
ities that he was always in dire anxiety lest the 
Governor should break an arm or crack a rib. 
This gingerly attitude of his opponent exasper- 
ated the Colonel. He didn't feel that it was fair 
for him to be straining like a tiger to get a half- 
Nelson hold on the champion while the Tatter 
seemed to feel that he must play the nurse to 
him. After repeated urgings, he managed to 
get the champion to throw him about in real 
earnest — then he was satisfied. 

Colonel Roosevelt relates in his reminiscences 
that, while he was in the New York Legislature, 
he had as a sparring partner a second-rate prize- 
fighter who used to come to his rooms every 
morning and put on the gloves for a half-hour. 
One morning he failed to arrive, but a few days 
later there came a letter from him. It developed 
that he was then in jail; that boxing had been 
simply an avocation with him, and that his prin- 
cipal business was that of a burglar. 



MOST FAMOUS DIPLOMATIC TRIUMPH 

The war between Japan and Russia which had 
begun in February, 1904, was to result eventually 
in one of the most famous diplomatic triumphs 
of Roosevelt's seven and a half years in the 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 127 

White House. While the terrific land and sea 
fights in the Orient were holding the attention 
of the world, Roosevelt and his remarkable Sec- 
retary of State, the late John Hay, sent forth 
first the famous *'Hay Note," asking that the two 
warring countries respect the neutrality of China 
lest a greater catastrophe be precipitated. 

Russia and Japan agreed to the American 
request. 

The Russian-Japanese war was constantly in 
his thoughts. The beginning of his full term 
seemed to the President the psychological moment 
to propose to Japan and Russia that they get 
together peacefully and thresh out their differ- 
ences in conference. On June 7, 1905, the Presi- 
dent sent a note to the Czar and another to the 
Mikado asking them if they did not think it 
would be best for all mankind if they met to 
arrange terms for peace. Following a long dis- 
cussion as to the exact spot where they should 
meet, the peace envoys from Japan and Russia 
began to confer at Portsmouth, N. H., on August 
10, 1905 — ^Washington being too hot at that time 
of the year. 

Within eight days the delegates had come to 
a deadlock. President Roosevelt then induced 
the German Kaiser to join him in an appeal to 
the rulers of Russia and Japan. The joint ap- 
peal succeeded in inducing the Mikado to forego 
his demand for money indemnity, and caused the 
Czar to give to Japan much of the island of 
Saghalien. 



128 GOOD STORIES 

The peace treaty was signed on September 5, 
1905. Promptly and unanimously the world arose 
and acclaimed Roosevelt the fighter as the great- 
est peacemaker of the age. The following year 
he received the Nobel Peace Prize of $40,000 for 
that great service. This prize is given annually 
to the person who shall have done most during 
the year to promote the peace of the world. 



REGULATING RAILROAD RATES 

It was in 1905 that President Roosevelt began 
fighting for the regulation of railroad rates. The 
Esch-Townsend bill, his first essay in that line, 
was beaten, as he had expected it to be; but in 
1906 he forced the Heyburn bill through Con- 
gress in the face of such bitter opposition from 
his own party that he was obliged to form at one 
time an alliance with the Democrats. The latter 
charged bitterly that he threw them aside like 
a squeezed lemon when they had served his pur- 
pose, and the air was full of criminations and 
recriminations. 

But whatever he may have done with the 
Democrats, he had no hesitation in breaking with 
the leaders of his own party, such as Aldrich, 
and putting in the forefront one of the younger 
Senators, Dolliver of Iowa, and had the satisfac- 
tion of putting his bill through. 

On April 14, 1906, he publicly expressed his 
advocacy of a national inheritance tax, saying: 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 129 

"We shall ultimately have to consider the adop- 
tion of some such scheme as that of a progressive 
tax on all fortunes," and subsequently he de- 
clared himself in favor of an income tax. 



THE PANAMA CANAL 

One of the greatest, if not the greatest, 
achievement of Mr. Roosevelt's full term was the 
clearing av/ay of difficulties and the inauguration 
of actual work on the long-discussed plan to join 
the Atlantic and the Pacific by means of the 
Panama Canal. It is not too much to say that 
the world owes the canal to the initiative and 
energy of Theodore Roosevelt. 

In 1906 the Spooner bill was passed, giving 
the President authority to buy the old French 
Panama Canal Company, lay out a water route 
across the isthmus, reorganize a canal commis- 
sion, and begin to build. The work meant not 
only a battle against mountainous engineering 
problems, but notable medical and sanitary prob- 
lems that till then had defied the world. 

How well the work was done is fresh in the 
public mind. 

While Mr. Roosevelt was tackling his canal 
problems he put through far-reaching legislative 
and diplomatic coups that included the momen- 
tous passage of a bill giving Federal control, or 
at least direction, of the business of interstate 
commerce carriers; the suppression in the same 



130 GOOD STORIES 

year, 1906, of a Cuban insurrection against 
President Estrada Palma; and the inception of 
a wide-spreading conservation of America's nat- 
ural resources. 



AN ALPHABET OF ENEMIES 

It was late in 1905 that the Wall Street 
Journal alphabetically called the roll of Mr. 
Roosevelt's enemies as follows: 

A lot of people who are afraid of a foreign 
policy. 

Bribers and corruptionists of all kinds. 

Corporations that fear publicity. 

Disappointed office seekers. 

Every person who still thinks that the Pres- 
ident ought not to have received John 
Mitchell or Booker Washington. 

Financial interests that have been or are being 
investigated. 

Great men who find that Roosevelt is in their 
way. 

High finance that puts itself above the law. 

Interests that want to kill or delay the 
Panama Canal. 

Jacobins who are ready for anything that will 
serve to turn the "ins" out. 

Kangaroo politicians strong in their capacity 

to kick. 
"Law honesty." 

Men who squirmed under the enforcement of 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 131 

the Sherman Anti-Trust Law. 

Nicaragua Canal advocates. 

Odell (Governor of New York). 

Opponents of government regulation, especially 
railways. 

Pennsylvania's corrupt machine, recently re- 
buked at the polls. 

Railroads that have violated the law. 

Sugar lobbyists who don't want fair play given 
to the Philippines. 

Shippers who want rebates. 

Trusts that have become monopolies. 

Usurers and others who don't like the doctrine 
of the square deal. 

Voters, now few in number, who want us to 
give up the Philippines. 

Washington correspondents who feel that they 
have the right to run the White House. 

Xanthospermous journalism eager for a new 
sensation. 

You may perhaps find a few more by inquiring 
at 26 Broadway (Standard Oil headquar- 
ters) . 

Zealots who think it right to destroy even a 
reputation to benefit their party. 



HOBNOBBED WITH THE KAISER 

As a former President, his tour through 
Europe was both triumphant and sensational. 
He hobnobbed with the German Kaiser, lectured 



132 GOOD STORIES 

at the Sorbonne and at Oxford University, was 
received with high honors in Sweden and Hol- 
land, and roused a storm in London by his speech 
at the Guildhall. It was in this speech that he 
lectured England on her duty in Egypt. He dis- 
played an extraordinary familiarity with Egyp- 
tian affairs, but brought down upon himself a 
tempest of criticism by saying: 

"Now, either you have the right to be in 
Egypt or you have not. Either it is or is not 
your duty to establish and keep order. If you 
feel you have not the right to be in Egypt, if 
you do not wish to estabhsh and keep order 
there, why, then, by all means get out. 

"As I hope you feel that your duty to civil- 
ized mankind and your fealty to your own great 
traditions alike bid you to stay, then make the 
fact and name agree, and show that you are 
ready to meet in very deed the responsibility 
which is yours." 

The criticism which this speech brought down 
on Roosevelt, to do the English justice, did not 
come from them; it came chiefly from scandal- 
ized Americans, who were horrified at the idea 
of a fellow-American undertaking to lecture a 
friendly power on its problems. The English 
took it very well and seemed to like it. France 
criticized it, and Germany was bitter. 

FOUGHT ON ENEMY'S GROUND 

In France, Roosevelt followed his usual policy 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 133 

of intrepidly attacking what he believed to be 
local evils in their home. It was not in London 
nor in Berlin that he preached his anti-race 
suicide doctrine; it was in Paris. It was from 
the same motive that impelled him when during 
his campaign for the Presidency in 1912 he re- 
frained from attacking the Democratic party 
until he got into the South, the home and birth- 
place of the Democratic party, and delivered his 
blast against it. If there had been anything 
timorous about him he would have made his at- 
tack in Minnesota, where it would have been safe. 
Instead, he picked out Atlanta, where it is almost 
treason to say a word against Democracy, and 
where his audience was made up entirely of 
Democrats. 

His defiant challenge was met by a roar from 
the audience. Their intention of howling him 
down and keeping him from having a hearing 
was manifest from the moment he began his 
assault. For five minutes the tumult went on. 
It seemed as if his speaking were at an end. 
Roosevelt suddenly adopted one of the most un- 
usual weapons ever employed by a stump speaker. 
There was a table near him, and he leaped upon 
it. The riotous mob was startled into stillness; 
they had no idea of his purpose, and they waited 
to see what he would do. Before they could re- 
cover from their surprise he had shot half a 
dozen sentences at them, and by that time they 
had come under the spell and were willing to 
give him a hearing. 



134 GOOD STORIES 

THE SQUARE SPORTSMAN 

Lieutenant Fortescue, a distant relative of the 
Roosevelt family, sometimes put on the gloves 
with the Colonel in the White House. One day, 
feeling in fighting trim, Fortescue asked the 
Colonel to box with him. Finally the latter 
agreed to go four rounds. According to Joseph 
Grant, detective sergeant of the Washington 
police department, detailed to the White House 
to "guard" the President, it was the fastest bout 
he ever saw. 

"The Colonel began to knock Lieutenant For- 
tescue right and left in the second round," said 
the detective. "His right and left got to the army 
officer's jaw time after time, and the bout was 
stopped in the third round to prevent the army 
man from getting knocked out. Then the 
Colonel turned to me and said: 1 think I can 
do the same to you. Put on the gloves!' 

"I drew them on reluctantly, and I put up the 
fight of my life. The best I could do was to 
prevent a decision and get a draw." 

Mr. Roosevelt numbered among his treasures 
a penholder Bob Fitzsimmons made for him out 
of a horseshoe, and a gold-mounted rabbit's foot 
which John L. Sullivan gave to him for a talis- 
man when he went on his African trip. 

He championed the cause of prizefighters on 
many occasions, though never hesitating to de- 
nounce the crookedness that has attended the 
commercializing of the ring. He held that power- 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 135 

ful, vigorous men of strong animal development 
must have some way in which their spirits can 
find vent. His acts while Police Commissioner 
of New York show clearly how he distinguished 
between the art of boxing itself and the men 
who try to make money out of it. On one hand, 
he promoted the establishment of boxing clubs in 
bad neighborhoods in order to draw the attention 
of street gangs from knifing and gun-fighting. 
On the other hand, finding that the prize ring 
had become hopelessly debased and was run for 
the benefit of hangers-on who permitted brutal- 
ity in order to make money out of it, he aided, 
as Governor, in the passage of a bill putting a 
stop to professional boxing for money. 



REST IN PEACE 

When the sad news of the son's death was 
officially confirmed, General Pershing cabled 
Colonel Roosevelt that if desired the body of 
Quentin would be removed to America. France 
meanwhile had paid the fullest honors to the 
dead aviator, and the Roosevelt family declined 
to accept the War Department's offer. 

In a letter to the Chief of Staff at Washing- 
ton, Colonel Roosevelt wrote: 

"Mrs. Roosevelt and I wish to enter a most 
respectful but most emphatic protest against the 
proposed course so far as our son Quentin is 
concerned. We have always believed that 



136 GOOD STORIES 

" 'Where the tree falls, 
There let it lie/ 

"We know that many persons feel entirely 
different, but to us it is painful and harrowing 
long after death to move the poor body from 
which the soul has fled. We greatly prefer that 
Quentin shall continue to lie on the spot where 
he fell in battle and where the foeman buried 
him. 

"After the war is over Mrs. Roosevelt and I 
intend to visit the grave and then to have a 
small stone put up by us, but not disturbing 
what has already been erected to his memory 
by his friends and American comrades-in-arms." 



ACHIEVEMENTS AS PRESIDENT 

President Roosevelt's elected term ended in 
1909 after achievements of which the following 
are historical: 

1. Dolliver-Hepbum railroad act. 

2. Extension of forest reserve. 

3. National irrigation act. 

4. Improvement of waterways and reservation 

of water power sites. 

5. Employers' liability act. 

6. Safety appliance act. 

7. Regulation of railroad employees' hours of 

labor. 

8. Establishment of Department of Commerce 

and Labor. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 137 

9. Pure food and drugs act. 

10. Federal meat inspection. 

11. Navy doubled in tonnage and greatly in- 

creased in efficiency. 

12. Battleship fleet sent around the world. 

13. State militia brought into co-ordination with 

the army. 

14. Canal Zone acquired and work of excavation 

pushed with increased energy. 

15. Development of civil self-government in 

insular possessions. 

16. Second intervention in Cuba; Cuba restored 

to the Cubans. 

17. Finances of Santo Domingo adjusted. 

18. Alaska boundary disputes settled. 

19. Reorganization of the consular service. 

20. Settlement of the coal strike of 1902. 

21. The Government upheld in the Northern 

Securities decision. 

22. Conviction of post office grafters and public 

land thieves. 

23. Investigation of the sugar trust customs 

frauds and resulting prosecutions. 

24. Suits begun against the Standard Oil and 

tobacco companies and other corporations 
for violation of the Sherman anti-trust act. 

25. Corporations forbidden to contribute to polit- 

ical campaign funds. 

26. The door of China kept open to American 

commerce. 

27. The settlement of the Russo-Japanese war by 

the treaty of Portsmouth. 



138 GOOD STORIES 

28. Diplomatic entanglements created by the 

Pacific Coast prejudice against Japanese 
immigration avoided. 

29. Twenty-four treaties of general arbitration 

negotiated. 

30. Interest-bearing debt reduced by more than 

$90,000,000. 

31. Annual conference of Governors of states 

inaugurated. 

32. Movement for conservation of natural re- 

sources inaugurated. 

33. Movement for the improvement of conditions 

of country life inaugurated. 
In addition, President Roosevelt recommended 
reforms and policies subsequently obtained by 
his successor, among them being: 

1. Reform of the banking and currency system. 

2. Inheritance tax. 

3. Income tax. 

4. Passage of a new employers' liability act to 

meet objections raised by the Supreme 
Court. 

5. Postal savings bank. 

6. Parcel post. 

7. Revision of the Sherman anti-trust act. 

8. Legislation to prevent overcapitalization, 

stock watering and manipulations by 
common carriers. 

9. Legislation compelling incorporation under 

Federal laws of corporations engaged in 
interstate commerce. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 139 

HIS PUBLISHED WORKS 

The published works of Theodore Roosevelt 
were, in the order of their appearance, as follows : 

"The Naval War of 1812" (1882). 

"Hunting Trips of a Ranchman" (1885). 

"Life of Thomas Hart Benton" (1887). 

"Life of Gouverneur Morris" (1887). 

"Ranch Life and Hunting Trails" (1888). 

"Essays on Practical Politics" (1888). 

"New York" in "Historic Towns" (1890). 

"American Big Game Hunting" (1893). 

"The Wilderness Hunter" (1893). 

"Hero Tales from American History," with 
Henry Cabot Lodge (1895). 

"Winning of the West," four volumes (1889- 
1896), the most important of his works. 

"American Ideals and Other Essays" (1897), 
a collection of magazine articles. 

"Trail and Campfire" (1897). 

"Big Game Hunting in the Rockies and on the 
Great Plains" (1899). 

"The Rough Riders" (1899). 

"Life of Oliver Cromwell" (1899). 

"The Strenuous Life" (1900), a collection of 
essays and addresses. 

"Good Hunting of Big Game in the West" 
(1907). 

"Addresses and Presidential Messages, 1902- 
1904" (1904). 

"Outdoor Pastimes of an American Hunter" 
(1906), besides portions of works like Volume VI 



140 GOOD STORIES 

in "History of the Royal Navy of England" and 
"The Deer and Antelope of North America" 
(1902), in "The Deer Family." 

"African Game Trails" (1910). 

"The New Nationalism" (1910). 

"Realizable Ideals"— the Earl Lectures (1912). 

"Conservation of Womanhood and Childhood" 
(1912). 

"History as Literature, and Other Essays" 
(1913). 

"Theodore Roosevelt: an Autobiography" 
(1913). 

"Life History of African Game Animals," two 
volumes (1914). 

"Through the Brazilian Wilderness" (1914). 

"America and the World War" (1915). 

"A Booklover's Holidays in the Open" (1916). 

"Fear God and Take Your Own Part" (1916). 

"Foes of Our Own Household" (1917). 

"National Strength and International Duty," 
Stafford Little Lectures, Princeton University 
(1917). 

"The Great Adventure," his last book, pub- 
lished just before Christmas, 1918, by Scribner's. 

Among his many popular magazine articles 
and addresses are: "American Ideals," "True 
Americanism," "The Many Virtues and Practical 
Politics," "The College Graduate and Public Life," 
"Phases of State Legislation," "How Not to Help 
Our Poorer Brother," "The Monroe Doctrine," 
"Washington's Forgotten Maxim," "National 
Life and Character," "Social Evolution," "The 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 141 

Law of Civilization and Decay/' ''Expansion and 
Peace," "Latitude and Longitude of Reform/' 
"Fellow Feeling a Political Factor," "Civic Help- 
fulness," "Character and Success." 



HIS FINAL MESSAGE 

On Saturday, January 4, he dictated a message 
which was read at a meeting of the American 
Defense Society at the Hippodrome, New York, 
on Sunday night, a few hours before he died. 
In this message he phrased afresh the thoughts 
that had been burning in his mind, and this was 
his last ringing message to the American people: 

"There must be no sagging back in the fight 
for Americanism, merely because the war is 'over. 
There are plenty of persons who have already 
made the assertion that they believe the Amer- 
ican people have a short memory, and that they 
intend to revive all the foreign associations 
which most directly interfere with the complete 
Americanization of our people. 

"Our principle in this matter should be simple. 
In the first place, we should insist that if the 
immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes 
an American and assimilates himself to us, he 
shall be treated on an exact equality with every- 
one else, for it is an outrage to discriminate 
against any such man because of creed or birth- 
place or origin. But this is predicated upon the 
man's becoming in fact an American and nothing 



142 GOOD STORIES 

but an American. If he tries to keep segregated 
with men of his own origin and separated from 
the rest of America, then he isn't doing his part 
as an American. 

*'There can be no divided allegiance here. Any 
man who says he is an American, but something 
else also, isn't an American at all. We have 
room for but one flag, the American flag, and 
this excludes the red flag, which symbolizes all 
wars against hberty and civilization, just as 
much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation 
to which we are hostile. 

"We have room for but one language here, and 
that is the American language, for we intend to 
see that the crucible turns our people out as 
Americans, of American nationality, and not as 
dwellers in a polyglot boarding house; and we 
have room for but one soul loyalty, and that is 
loyalty to the American people." 

Captain Archie Roosevelt was to have read 
this characteristic message in the Hippodrome, 
but on the Saturday he and his wife received 
word from Boston of the death of her father, 
Thomas S. Lockwood. 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 143 

ROOSEVELT CHRONOLOGY 

Born at No. 28 East 20th St., New York 
City, October 27 1858 

Graduated at Harvard 1880 

Law student (New York University) 1881 

Elected to New York Legislature three 
times 1881-1882-1883 

Republican candidate for Speaker 1883 

Delegate to New York Republican State Con- 
vention 1884 

First of the four Delegates-at-Large from 
New York to Republican National Con- 
vention 1884 

Ranchman in North Dakota 1884-1889 

Republican candidate for Mayor of New 
York 1886 

United States Civil Service Commissioner.... 
1889-1895 

President New York Police Commission 

1895-1897 

Assistant Secretary United States Navy 

. 1897-1898 



144 GOOD STORIES 

Organized Rough Riders (First U. S. Volun- 
teer Cavalry), Lieutenant-Colonel and 
Colonel in Cuba Campaign, in which he 
took the lead in the battles of Las Gua- 
simas and San Juan Hill 1898 

Governor of New York 1899-1900 

Vice-President of United States 1901 

Succeeded to the Presidency September 14, 1^01 

Elected President (by largest majority ever 
given a candidate) 1904 

President of United States 71/2 years„..1901-1909 

Initiated our Forest and Land and River 
Reclamation Policy 1901 

Settled the coal strike 1902 

Enforced the Monroe Doctrine in Venezuela, 
1902-1903, and in Santo Domingo 1905-1907 

Recognized Republic of Panama and initiated 
construction of Panama Canal 1903 

Re-elected President 1904 

Negotiated the Russo-Japanese Peace 
Treaty ...1905 

Outlined solution of Algeciras Conference 
concerning Africa (France, Germany, 
Spain, Morocco, Italy and United States). .1906 

Received the Nobel Peace Prize 1906 



ABOUT ROOSEVELT 145 

Established Roosevelt Foundation for Indus- 
trial Peace 1907 

Secured Santo Domingo Treaty, recognizing 
Monroe Doctrine 1907 

Sent our fleet around the world — 42,000 
miles — (first national fleet to circumnavi- 
gate the globe)... 1907-1908 

Assembled first House of Governors in Con- 
servation movement 1908 

Editor of "The Outlook" 1909-1914 

Tour of Africa and Europe 1909-1910 

Special Ambassador to England at funeral of 
Edward VII 1910 

Lectured at European Universities, Oxford, 
Paris, and Berlin (delivering the Romanes 
Lecture at Oxford) 1910 

Led the Progressive campaign 1912 

Toured South America 1913 

Toured South America again ; discovered and 
explored 600 miles of unknown river, 
which the Brazilian Government named 
after him, Rio Teodoro 1914 

Attacked "invisible government" in New 
York 1914 



146 GOOD STORIES 

Proved his attack and defeated Barnes libel 
suit 1915 

Initiated the Preparedness movement 1916 

Declined Progressive nomination and sup- 
ported Hughes 1916 

Organized Roosevelt Legion of 150,000 men 
for service in the World War, and ten- 
dered it to the Government 1917 

Championed more efficient and vigorous 
prosecution of war 1918 

Gave four sons to the service (three 
wounded, one killed) 1918 

Turned over Nobel Peace Prize to Soldiers* 
Aid Society 1918 

Editorial writer for the "Kansas City Star"-1918 

Passed away in sleep at his home in Oyster 
Bay, 4:15 a. m., Monday, January 6 1919 



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STORIES FROM THE TRENCHES 

By Carleton B. Case 
160 Pages Artistic Paper Covers Price 50 Cents. 

The jolly tales by and about the soldiers are here 
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good stories and all who are interested in the live- 
ly doings of our boys in khaki may read and be 
entertained. Not only the Yankee lads, but also 
our Canadian, British and French brothers in arms 
have stories to tell you in this book ; and while they 
are all *' stories" they also are all true to fact, 
which increases your interest in them many fold. 
This amusing book should be in every American 
home. 



WARTIME AND PATRIOTIC SELECTIONS 

For Recitation and Reading 

By Carleton B, Case 

160 Pages Artistic Paper Covers Price 50 Cents. 

New edition just issued. The book that pleases 
every one ; containing the best of the new verse 
written during the present war that is suitable for 
declamation and public reading in school, collcs^e, 
church, patriotic and Red Cross meetings, and all 
similar occasions ; together with the very choicest 
of the old favorites. Humor, pathos, lively action, 
narrative, the grand and the sublime, all have 
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FUNNY STORIES TOLD BY THE 

SOLDIERS 

By Carleton B. Case 

leo Pag-es Art Paper Covers Price 50 Cents. 

When the victorious hoys of the American and 
Canadian overseas forces came home from the 
Great War they had many amusing and mirthful 
experiences to relate. For there is a humorous 
side even to w^ar — and trust the laughter-loving 
lads from this side of the water to see it in all its 
funny aspects. 

In consequence, v^^e have here a bookful of the 
newest and best stories and jokes that the Great 
War brought forth, that will be read and laughed 
over around every fireside for years to come. It 
is good, clean fun, such as we all enjoy and are the 
better for having read. (Just from the press.) 



ANECDOTES OF THE GREAT WAR 

By Carleton B. Case 
160 Paires Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

The funny things which the combatants said and 
did in the recent great conflict in Europe and Asia, 
the recruits' blunders, the stay-at-homes' excuses, 
the bulls of the Irish fighters, the jokes on the 
officers and on the lads in the trenches, — these and 
many other amusing anecdotes of the war are to 
be found in this book in great detail. Its fun is 
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FORD SMILES 

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160 Pases Paper CoTers Price 40 Cents. 

The very newest, largest and choicest collection 
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good natured and laughable, with nothing to of- 
fend even Mr. Henry Ford himself. The author 
went to Detroit and obtained some of the new jokes 
in this book right at the Ford factory. You can't 
help laughing, whether you own a Ford car or not, 
at the funny things in ''Ford Smiles." When vou 
get this book of humor we ask you to read the short 
Preface to it; it explains, in the author's opinion, 
why every good Ford joke is a compliment to 
that great invention — the Ford Motor Car. Prob- 
ably you hadn't thought of it that way. 



VAUDEVILLE WIT 

WITH 75 CARTOONS 

By Carleton B. Case 
160 Paeres Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

A superb collection of the latest cross-fire con- 
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by the top-notch artists of the American vaudeville 
stage. Lew Fields, Bert Williams, Nat Goodwin, 
Eddie Foy, Jim Corbett, Ben "Welch, Elsie Janis, 
Mclntyre and Heath, Will Rogers, Irvin Cobb, 
Elizabeth Murray, ''Abe Potash," and many other 
headliners are represented by some of their best 
stuff. As good as a show. An exclusive collection, 
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FLASHES OF IRISH WIT 

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160 Pages. Paper Covers. Price 40 cents. 

The best bulls, blunders and banter by the sons 
and daughters of the Emerald Isle, gathered into 
one volume for the delectation of all who appreci- 
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from the ancient Irish authors, with their "Handy 
Andys" and other butts and jokers, but, in the 
main, is the best wit of the modern, the trans- 
planted Irishman, the kind that Americans best 
know and appreciate. You will agree, when you 
peruse it, that it is the most mirth-provoking col- 
lection of real good Irish fun you ever read, and to 
say that is equivalent to saying that it is a book 
of unsurpassed humor, for the Irishman above all 
others ' ' takes the cake " as a natural wit. 



A BATCH OF SMILES 

By Carleton B. Case 
160 Pages. Paper Covers. Price 4o cents. 

A collection of the most laughable jokes, doings 
and sayings of funny folks, gathered from every 
quarter of the globe ; warranted to produce a smile 
on the longest face. Comprising original and se- 
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which have never before been in print, and all of 
them funny and laugh-provoking; such humor as 
ladies and gentlemen appreciate, and are better 
and happier for the having. This is a companion 
book to Flashes of Irish Wit, its contents entirely 
different and with less of the Hibernian humor; 
the two taken together making a most complete 
gathering of modern wit. 

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WIT AND HUMOR OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN 

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160 Pages. Paper Covers. Price 4o Cents. 

The anecdotes in this work are authenticated by 
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mortal Abe. It is believed that every act and joke 
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Lincoln, of which he was not the author. Naturally 
that has no place in this collection. Here is a book- 
ful of the genuine material, and it is worthy of a 
reading by every American. Especially should 
our youth be permitted to enjoy the wisdom and 
wit that sparkled from the mind of this great man. 



THE SUNNY SIDE OF LIFE 

By Carleton B. Case 

160 Pages. Paper Covers. Price 40 Cents. 

The felicitous and witty sayings and doings of 
people that start us all to smiling and furnish us 
with hearty amusement. Short bits of real humor 
selected from the world's newest and best, — clean 
and wholesome, suitable for the family circle and 
all who appreciate a good laugh. A book to be en- 
joyed and passed on to appreciative friends, that 
the smiles may go 'round and all be the happier for 
a brief glimpse of the sunny side of life. The 
merry quip and the happily turned anecdote 
always will hold the human interest. This collec- 
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some fun. 

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A LITTLE NONSENSE 

By Carleton B. Case 

IfiO Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

A book of the best current wit, culled from Eu- 
ropean and American sources ; all clean and laugh- 
able ; due to find a place in every home where mirth 
is welcome and happiness has its habitat. Nobody 
knows who wrote 

*'A little nonsense now and then 
Is relished by the wisest men/' 
but that couplet inspired our title. It is a collec« 
tion of smile-provokers for *'the wisest men," and 
women, and we believe you 11 like it. There are 
bits of Irish anecdote in places, but most of the 
fun is other than Hibernian, and all of it is good. 

SOME IRISH SMILES 

Bt Carleton B. Case 

160 Pasres Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

A volume of genuine Irish humor with several 
hearty laughs to every page ; a book to be read and 
passed along to one's chums, that all may enjoy 
its fun. The wit of our friends from the Emerald 
Isle is proverbial, and none is so ready to see and 
appreciate the point of it as the American. Its 
humor is so spontaneous that it creates laughter in 
spite of one's self, and that is the kind of wit all 
of us prefer. This little 160 page book is for 
laughing purposes only, and will be carefully read 
from cover to cover by every purchaser. 

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Case's New Book of 
CONUNDRUMS AND RIDDLES 

By Carleton B. Case 

X60 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

Our young folks can have a host of fun with this 
Conundrum Book in the home,— and the older 
folks, too. Some of these Riddles are brand new, 
and all of them are good, being selected as the very 
choicest from the wits of all nations and every age. 
The answer is given to every one of the Conun- 
drums — except that those on the first page are a 
play upon the names of people whom you know, 
and require no answers. When you get the book, 
try some of the Conundrums without reading the 
answers; then spring them on your friends. 

ETIQUETTE 

For Every Occasion 

By Mortimer Chesterfield 

160 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited by Carleton B. Case.) A guide to po- 
liteness and the customs of good society that every 
one will be the better and happier for reading. 
There is no person of education and refinement, in 
city or country, but will find much of value in its 
pages in the way of instruction and advice as to 
how he or she should behave under every condi- 
tion of social life. The latest guide to coiTect con- 
duct at parties, weddings, dinners, at home, in 
public, at hotels, traveling, calling, ^ etc. It is 
sprightly and entertaining while it instructs. 

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ORIENTAL DREAM BOOK 

By Lee Wo Chang 

160 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited for American readers by Carleton B. 
Case.) Contains complete interpretations of nu- 
merous dreams as vouched for by the Orientals, 
Gypsies, Witches, Egyptians, Augurs, Astrologers, 
Magi, Fortune-tellers, Soothsayers, Prophets, Seers 
and Wise Men of ancient and modern times. To 
eeek for the significance of one's dreams is as nat- 
ural as it is to dream, and the Orientals, having 
given centuries of thought and study to the sub- 
ject, are recognized as the highest authority on 
their meanings and interpretations. Throughout 
the book are lucky numbers that have expert sanc- 
tion as the favorites in policy and lotteries. 

TELLING FORTUNES BY CARDS 

By Mohammed Ali 

160 Pases Paper Cove»'» Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited by Carleton B. Case.) A symposium of 
the various ancient and modem methods, as prac- 
ticed by Arab Seers and Sibyls and the Komany 
Gypsies, with plain examples and simple instruc- 
tions that enable anyone to acquire the art with 
ease. Divination by cards nowadays is chiefly em- 
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the data for the complete mastery of this interest- 
ing science, and is the only one in the English lan- 
guage that is free from technical errors. 

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GYPSY WITCH FORTUNE-TELLER 

By The Queen of the Romanies 

160 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited by Carletoa B. Case.) Contains all the 
approved methods of Telling Fortianes, as prac- 
ticed by tbe Seers, Sibyls and Gypsies of all times 
and nations, together with various Omens and 
Charms, a complete list of alleged lucky and un- 
lucky days, how to tell anyone's character and 
age and the day of one's birth, the fortune in the 
tea grounds, the meanings of moles on the human 
body, Palmistry, Physiognomy, etc., etc. With 
this book anyone can readily master the Fortune 
Telling art, which insui-es abundant amusement for 
one's self and companions for an indefinite period. 
The very latest work on this interesting subject. 

GYPSY WITCH DREAM BOOK 

Bt The Queen of the Romanies 

160 Pages Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited by Carleton B. Case.) The complete- 
ness of this work is attested by its numerous ex- 
elusive interpretations of dreams based upon mod- 
em subjects, as the aeroplane, automobile, base- 
ball, cabaret, chauffeur, football, golf, manicure, 
moving pictures, phonograph, tango, turkey-trot, 
telephone, typewriter, wireless, and many others, 
found in no other similar work. The best of the 
old and all the new interpretations are given. 
Whether you take your dreams seriously or find iu 
their decipherment merely a pleasant pastime, you 
will appreciate the perfection of this newest and 
most complete Dream Dictionary. 

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CARD TRICKS 

By Prof. Romanoff 

160 Pag-es Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

Illustrated. A practical and complete exposition 
of the best methods of performing all the standard 
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teur magicians, told in plain and simple language 
and helpfully illustrated. With this book the am- 
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of-hand with cards and learn .to perform the mys- 
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Card tricks when skillfully performed are unex- 
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amateur who thus succeeds in entertaining his 
friends and neighbors often finds himself fitted 
to venture into the profitable field of the profes- 
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HERRMANN'S WIZARDS' MANUAL 

160 Pa«res Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

Fully illustrated. A new and complete guide to 
performing stage and parlor tricks of all kinds, as 
practiced by Herrmann the Great and others of 
the celebrated magicians of the past and present ; 
giving away the secrets of how they are done so 
that any one can acquire the art and learn to per- 
form the most difficult tricks with cards, coins, 
dice, etc. Also has chapters (hi Ventriloquism, 
Spirit-mediums, Black Art, Mind Reading, etc. 
The latest and one of the best works of its kind; 
tells everything in plain and simple language so 
that any one can readily understand it all. 

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HOW TO BOX 

W5 Pa^es Paper Covers 63 Illastrations Price 40 Cents. 

This interesting book is divided into four parts, 
each written by an expert, as follows : 

How to Box to Win, by Terry McGovern. 

How to Build Muscle, by James J. Corbett. 

Hew to Breathe, Stand, Walk or Bun, by J. Gardner 
Smith, M. D. 

How to Punch the Bag, by Gus E. and Arthur P. 
Keeley. 

It is known also as ''The Book of Health and 
Strength, ' ' and the names of its authors are an assur- 
ance that its instruction and information are the very 
best obtainable on the subjects. Everyone knows 
Terry and Jim ; Dr. Smith is well-kno'^^^l in New York 
as a physical training instructor in its schools and 
the Y. M. C. A. ; w^hile the Keeley brothers are known 
as champion bag-punchers of the world. 

THE AMATEUR TRAPPER 

By Stanley Harding 

160 Pages Paper Covers bQ Illustratiens Pidce 40 Cents. 

The complete guide to the arts of trapping, snaring 
and netting American wild game of various kinds. 
Tells how to construct dead- falls, traps, snares and nets 
to become expert in the art ; the most attractive baits, 
as used by professional trappers ; how to cure and tan 
skins and furs at home, and all about it. Contains also 
the rudiments of the art of taxidermy for the amateur, 
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this book. 

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Madame LaFontaine's 
HOW TO WRITE LOVE LETTERS 

160 ragres Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited by Carleton B. Case.) This book of 
"First Aid to Lovers'' is replete with model let- 
ters for the guidance of men and women under all 
circumstances of courtship, proposal, acceptance, 
rejection, jealousy, quarrel, making-up, etc., etc., 
with the intention of furthering a knowledge of how 
to acquire success in courtship, looking to a prompt 
and happy marriage. It is a work adapted to 
modern conditions and every-day life, written in 
words that all can understand, and suggesting in- 
numerable valuable ideas to the correspondent who 
would have his or her letters on this important sub- 
ject — Love — written in the most acceptable style. 

ART OP MAKING LOVE 

By Mortimer Chesterfield 

160 Pasres Paper Covers Price 40 Cents. 

(Edited by Carleton B. Case.) The Lovers' 
Complete Manual and Guide to Courtship and 
Marriage, with helpful hints to married and single 
and all who desire to marry happily. How to woo, 
win and wed. A book for women as well as for 
men, and one that should be in the hands of every 
young man and young woman before they take the 
first step toward marriage. It treats of Love in all 
its phases, tells the secrets of pleasing a sweetheart, 
*'How to Propose,'' *'The Art of Kissing,'' ^*How 
to be Happy," and all about it. 

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FOR EVERYONE WHO LOVES M OTOR-BOATING 

Motor Craft 
Encyclopedia 

192 Pages. Size 5 x 7j^ in. 

Cloth Bound. Three-color Cover. 

Illustrated. 

New Edition 

By BERTON ELLIOT and P. R. WARD 

THE standard hand-book on motor boats and 
marine engines. Splendid chapters on : "How 
to Select a Motor Boat," *'How to Build a Motor 
Boat," "Points on Buying a Second-hand Boat," 
"How to Paint a Boat," "How to Install a Motor," 
"Rules and Customs of the Sea," "National Motor 
Boat Bill," "Laying Boat Up for Winter," "How 
to Build a Motor Ice-Boat," "Furnishings and 
Fittings," "Electric Lighting for Motor Craft," etc., 
in addition to full details of the care and operation 
of marine engines under all conditions (with a 
chapter on the Diesel engine), and an "Engine 
Trouble Chart" that is very helpful. 

Speaking of this book, the largest builder of 
marine engines said: "We never expected that 
such a useful, practical book would be published. 
The information it contains is invaluable." 

PRICE, POSTPAID, $L50. 

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In Attractive Paper Covers 

Edited by Carleton B. Case 

A Batch of Smiles (humor) 40c 

A Little Nonsense. . . 
Flashes of Irish Wit. 



Little Nonsense ^ ^ 



Some Irish Smiles ^, ^^ 

Anecdotes of the Great War ^^ ^^c 

The Sunny Side of Life ^. ]^c 

Vaudeville Wit ., X 

Ford Smiles ^ ••..••• ,, ^^ 

Wit and Humor of Abraham Lmcoln -^J^c 

New Book of Conundrums and Riddles Wc 

How to Write Love-Letters ^^c 

Art of Making Love ^^ 

Etiquette for Every Occasion ^c 

Gypsy Witch Fortune-Teller ^^c 

Telling Fortunes by Cards ^^c 

Gypsy Witch Dream Book ^c 

Oriental Dream Book ^n^ 

Herrmann's Wizards' Manual ^^c 

Card Tricks ^0!^ 

The Amateur Trapper ^n^ 

How to Box..... \"^--\: 40r 

Comic Declamations and Readings ^^c 

Junior Recitations J^ 

Holiday Recitations 2(V 

District School Recitations J^c 

Children's Select Recitations and Dialogues 4Uc 

Comic Dialogues for Boys and Girls wc 

Jolly Dialogues ^^^ 

Junior Dialogues .X"; 

High School Didogues ^^^ 

Entertaining Dialogues .••••••.•• ; VrT 

Fun for Friday Afternoons (dialogues) ^^c 

Friday Afternoon Dramas JJ{; 

Thrift Cook Book............ fJ; 

Wartime and Patriotic Selections ^J^c 

Stories from the Trenches . . • • • -. ^^^ 

Funny Stories Told by the Soldiers.............. ^^c 

Good Stories About Roosevelt (ready m June).. 50c 
The very latest works of their kind. Uniform in style. 
Procurable where you bought this book or will oe sent 
postpaid by the publishers on receipt of price. 

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LBs: 



20 



